Four-vessel biplanar cerebral arteriography (ART) has
been considered the gold standard for diagnosis of BCVI.
Unfortunately, it is invasive and resource intensive,
and its risks include complications related to catheter
insertion (1–2% hematoma; arterial pseudoaneurysm),
contrast administration (1–2% renal dysfunction;
allergic reaction), and stroke (<1%).11
Duplex ultrasonography is widely used for imaging the
extracranial carotid arteries. However, because of its
technical limitations and poor sensitivity in clinical
trials, there is virtually no role for ultrasonography
for BCVI screening.3,27
Similarly, with its documented poor sensitivity and
specificity for BCVI,12,28
magnetic resonance angiography is not considered a
standard screening test for BCVI. In contrast, CT
angiography (CTA) has emerged as the preferred screening
test for BCVI. Although the accuracy of early generation
CTA was poor,12,28
it was improved with multidetector-row (4- and 8-slice)
CTA.29,30
Sixteen-slice CTA has been adopted by a number of
centers and seems to reliably identify clinically
significant BCVI.15,26
Three published studies have evaluated the accuracy of
16-slice CTA compared with ART. Eastman et al.14
reported 100% sensitivity of 16-slice CTA for carotid
and 96% sensitivity for vertebral artery injuries. Utter
et al.29 performed ART on
a subset (30%) of their patients with normal CTA and
initially found that CTA missed seven BCVI among 82
patients, for a negative predictive value of 92%.
However, retrospective review of the CTA images found
that the injuries were evident in six of the seven
patients, and that the seventh patient’s abnormality was
most likely not traumatic in origin. Malhotra et al.31
have offered a note of caution, reporting 43%
false-positive and 9% false-negative rates for CTA.
However, as in the series of Utter et al.,29
the inaccuracy of CTA seemed to be related in large part
to the radiologists’ inexperience, as all of the missed
BCVI occurred in the first half of the study period.
Thus, it seems that 16-slice (or more) CTA is reliable
for screening for clinically significant BCVI, but that
the accuracy diminishes with fewer detector rows. If CTA
is not available, ART is the gold standard. If ART is
not available, it is recommended that an institutional
clinical practice guideline be outlined that considers
transfer to a trauma center for patients at high risk.
In the setting of a symptomatic patient and normal
noninvasive screening study, ART is recommended to
definitively exclude injury.