Relationship of Coronary Artery Disease with Carotid Artery Stenosis as Assessed by Carotid Doppler Ultrasound

Abstract

Introduction: Atherosclerosis is a systemic disorder that often involves multiple arterial beds such as carotid, coronary and peripheral arteries. The progressive simultaneous increase in the degree of carotid artery stenosis (CAS) with CAD (Coronary Artery Disease) has raised the valid speculations of a same mechanism of stenosis in both the arterial fields. Objective: The objective of this study was to correlate CAS severity with CAD severity by comparing Ultrasound measurements of CAS in study group subjects with evidence of significant CAD on coronary angiography and control group subjects with normal coronaries or non-significant CAD coronary angiography. Methodology: This case control study was conducted at Cardiology Department/Punjab Institute of Cardiology Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan from 1/2/2016 to 30/7/2016. In this study the Non Probability consecutive sampling technique was used. The Sample size was 86 with 43 case and 43 control population. Results: The average age of the patients was 53.45±10.16 years. The female to male ratio was 1:1.9. In this study 46% had normal carotid arteries with no evidence of atherosclerotic plaque. Clinically significant Carotid artery stenosis (>50%) was found in 0% of patients with normal coronaries and in 4.3% of patients with non-significant CAD. Similarly, clinically significant CAS was found in 10%, 20%, 50%, and 45.5% of patients with 1 VD, 2 VD, 3 VD and LMD, respectively. In this study there was the positive correlation between the CAS and CAD severity while comparing cases and control groups. Conclusion: The principle result of this study is that the degree of carotid artery disease is positively correlated to the severity of CAD.