Article

Midbrain transcranial sonography in Korean patients with Parkinson's disease.

Department of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
Movement Disorders (impact factor: 4.51). 11/2007; 22(13):1922-6. DOI:10.1002/mds.21628 pp.1922-6
Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT Transcranial sonography (TCS) is potentially useful for the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, studies on TCS have so far been restricted to European populations. To investigate the efficacy of TCS in Korean PD patients and its correlation with the clinical features, we carried out midbrain TCS in 43 PD patients and 35 normal controls and evaluated the area of the substantia nigra (SN) hyperechogenicity and its ratio to the area of the whole midbrain. In 16 subjects (21%), TCS was unsuccessful due to insufficient acoustic temporal bone windows. The mean area of bilateral SN hyperechogenicity and its ratio to the midbrain area were greater in the PD patients than that in the controls (P < 0.01). In the PD patients, the area of SN hyperechogenicity and its ratio to the individual midbrain area were moderately correlated with the PD duration (r = 0.526 and 0.536, P = 0.01, respectively) but not with the age, UPDRS motor scores or H-Y stage. There was no difference in the SN hyperechogenicity between the tremor-dominant, akinetic-rigid, and mixed-type PD patients. In conclusion, midbrain TCS is an effective diagnostic tool for detecting PD in the Korean population. However, it does not reflect the severity or phenotypes of parkinsonism.

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    Article: Transcranial duplex in the differential diagnosis of parkinsonian syndromes
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    ABSTRACT: Background Transcranial duplex scanning (TCD) of the substantia nigra (SN) is increasingly used to diagnose Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease (IPD). Up until now 70 diagnostic studies have been published, not only on investigation of the SN, but also of the lenticular nucleus (LN) and the Raphe nuclei (RN). Method We systematically reviewed all diagnostic TCD studies in parkinsonian patients up to June 2008. Results We found 35 eligible studies. Of the 1534 IPD patients investigated in the 35 studies 200 (13 %) had an inconclusive SN-TCD. An increased echo-intensity of the SN was seen in 1167 (87 %) of the 1334 IPD patients, 276 (12 %) of the 2340 healthy controls and in 41 (30 %) of the 138 patients with an atypical parkinsonian syndrome (APS). On the contrary, a pathological LNTCD was found more often in APS patients (79 %) than in IPD patients (23 %) and healthy controls (6 %). A decreased echo-intensity of the RN was found more often in depressed (46 %) than in non-depressed IPD patients (16 %). Conclusions SN-TCD accurately differentiates between patients with IPD and healthy controls, but not between patients with IPD and APS. LN-TCD is only moderate accurate to delineate IPD from APS, but combinations of SN- and LN-TCD may be more promising. RN-TCD has only marginal diagnostic accuracy in diagnosing depression in IPD and non-IPD patients. Before TCD can be implicated, more research is needed to standardize the TCD technique, to investigate the TCD in non-research settings and to determine the additional value of TCD compared with currently used clinical techniques like SPECT imaging.
    Journal of Neurology 04/2012; 256(4):530-538. · 3.47 Impact Factor
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    Article: Specificity of transcranial sonography in parkinson spectrum disorders in comparison to degenerative cognitive syndromes.
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    ABSTRACT: Hyperechogenicity of the substantia nigra (SN+), detected by transcranial sonography (TCS), was reported as a characteristic finding in Parkinson's disease (PD), with high diagnostic accuracy values, when compared mainly to healthy controls or essential tremor (ET) group. However, some data is accumulating that the SN + could be detected in other neurodegenerative and even in non-neurodegenerative disorders too. Our aim was to estimate the diagnostic accuracy of TCS, mainly focusing on the specificity point, when applied to a range of the parkinsonian disorders, and comparing to the degenerative cognitive syndromes. A prospective study was carried out at the Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences from January until September 2011. Initially, a TCS and clinical examination were performed on 258 patients and 76 controls. The General Electric Voluson 730 Expert ultrasound system was used. There were 12.8% of cases excluded with insufficient temporal bones, and 4.3% excluded with an unclear diagnosis. The studied sample consisted of the groups: PD (n = 71, 33.2%), ET (n = 58, 27.1%), PD and ET (n = 10, 4.7%), atypical parkinsonian syndromes (APS) (n = 3, 1.4%), hereditary neurodegenerative parkinsonism (HDP) (n = 3, 1.4%), secondary parkinsonism (SP) (n = 23, 10.8%), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n = 33, 15.4%), dementia (n = 13, 6.1%), and control (n = 71). There were 80.3% of PD patients at stages 1 & 2 according to Hoehn and Yahr. At the cut-off value of 0.20 cm² of the SN+, the sensitivity for PD was 94.3% and the specificity - 63.3% (ROC analysis, AUC 0.891), in comparison to the rest of the cohort. At the cut-off value of 0.26 cm², the sensitivity was 90% and the specificity 82.4%.The estimations for the lowest specificity for PD, in comparison to the latter subgroups (at the cut-off values of 0.20 cm² and 0.26 cm², respectively) were: 0% and 33.3% to APS, 33.3% and 66.7% to HDP, 34.8% and 69.6% to SP, 55.2% and 82.8% to ET, 75% and 91.7% to dementia. The high sensitivity of the test could be employed as a valuable screening tool. But TCS is more useful as a supplementary diagnostic method, due to the specificity values not being comprehensive.
    BMC Neurology 03/2012; 12:12. · 2.17 Impact Factor

Keywords

35 normal controls
 
43 PD patients
 
bilateral SN hyperechogenicity
 
detecting PD
 
effective diagnostic tool
 
European populations
 
H-Y stage
 
individual midbrain area
 
insufficient acoustic temporal bone windows
 
Korean PD patients
 
Korean population
 
mean area
 
midbrain area
 
midbrain TCS
 
mixed-type PD patients
 
Parkinson's disease
 
PD duration
 
PD patients
 
UPDRS motor scores
 
whole midbrain
 

Ji-Youn Kim