Evaluation Of The Relationship Between Carotid Plaque Neovascul-arization And Coronary Heart Disease With Contrast-enhanced Ultrasound

Objective To determine the correlation between the degree of carotid plaques intraplaque neovacularization and coronary heart disease detected with CEUS.Methods Ninety-eight patients with carotid atherosclerosis and 104 coronary heart disease patients were collected, coronary heart disease were divided into ACS and SCAD, and a totle of 113 and 125 carotid plaques were divided into homogeneous, inhomogeneous and ulcerated plaques baced on echogenicity and morphology. Homogeneous plaques were classified as hypo-, iso-and hyper-echogenicity. The features of carotid plaques on CEUS were analyzed and compared with plaques echogenicity、 morphology and coronary heart disease.Results The detectable rate of neovascularization in hypoechoic plaques was significantly higher than that in isoechoic plaque(c2=10.64,P=0.001), hyperechoic plaque( c2=18.62, P<0.001)and ulcerated plaque( c2=7.38, P=0.007), while the difference of the detectable rate between hypoechoic plaques and inhomogeneous plaque was not statistically significant( c2=2.20, P=0.138).In sixty-four enhanced plaques, 46 plaques(71.88%) were enhanced from vessel wall to plaque, including.44 plaques were diffuse enhanced, 2 plaques were bundles enhanced, and 18 plaques(28.13%) were enhanced from the vessel cavity to plaque. There were no significant difference on CEUS mode among plaques with different echogenicity(P>0.05).The percentage of soft plaque in the ACS group was signifieantly higher than that in SCAD group( c2=9.03,p=0.003), the propotion of contrast-agent enhancement in patients with ACS was significantly than in patients with SCAD( c2=14.09, p<0.001).Conclusions CEUS provides more valuable information about intraplaque neovascularization,it is helpful to assess the stability of the plaques. Carotid artery plaque neovascularization density was significantly higher in patients with ACS than that in patients with SCAD by using contrast-enhanced ultrasound, revealing that the neovascularization density is closely related to clinical symptoms of patients with coronary heart disease.