ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

International Angiology 2003 September;22(3):273-8

Copyright © 2003 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Common carotid intima-media thickness: does it matter how it is measured

Cipriano C. ¹, Constans J. ¹, Gosse P. ², Bressolette L. ³, Saïdani S. ¹, Conri C. ¹

¹ Service of Internal Medicine and Vascular Pathology “St. André” Hospital, Bordeaux, France 2 Service of Cardiology «St. André” Hospital, Bordeaux, France 3 Service of Vascular Examinations «La Cavale Blanche» Hospital, Brest, France

Aim. Inti­ma media thick­ness (IMT) has ­proved to be a use­ful tool in pre­dict­ing car­di­o­vas­cu­lar mor­bid­ity. How­ev­er, meth­ods are not well stan­dard­ized, and sev­er­al software pack­ag­es soft­wares are avail­able ­although they have never been com­pared with one other. Thus, the extrap­o­la­tion of data from large stud­ies might be ques­tion­able on rou­tine prac­tice. Our objec­tive was to com­pare 2 soft­ware pack­ag­es large­ly used for semi-auto­mat­ic meas­ure­ment of IMT.
Meth­ods. We have meas­ured IMT on left and right com­mon carot­id in 97 ­patients in stan­dard­ized con­di­tions.
­Results. The same image was pro­cessed ­through the 2 soft­ware (­Metris and Iôdp). There was no dif­fer­ence for IMT meas­ured at var­i­ous times by the same inves­ti­ga­tor, ­although the num­ber of mea­sur­able ­points ­increased as the oper­a­tor ­became more expe­ri­enced. The num­ber of mea­sur­able ­points was sig­nif­i­cant­ly great­er with Iôdp. IMT was lower with Iôdp than ­Metris (mean dif­fer­ence 0.066 mm on the right side).
Con­clu­sion. These ­results sug­gest that the same soft­ware must be used for repeat­ed meas­ure­ments in 1 ­patient. One must be care­ful in using data from large stud­ies or nor­mal­ity val­ues. At the indi­vid­u­al level, the use of IMT to deter­mine vas­cu­lar risk is depen­dent upon the soft­ware used. It is ­urgent to stan­dard­ize the meth­ods of IMT meas­ure­ment.