Cervical Artery Dissection (CeAD) in Physicians

cians were more likely to present with cervical fibromuscular dysplasia and with intracranial aneurysms ( table 1 ). Physicians with IS due to CeAD were more often treated by thrombolysis than non-physicians (33.3 vs. 10.3%; p = 0.020). No significant differences were observed in baseline characteristics or risk factors between physicians and non-physicians of the CeAD cohort ( table 1 ). Our data suggest that (1) there are more physicians among CeAD patients than among non-CeAD IS patients and (2) CeAD with purely local symptoms was more common in physicians than in non-physicians. Moreover, we observed significant differences in the frequency of rare vascular anomies (fibromuscular dysplasia, intracranial aneurysms) and in acute treatment between physicians and non-physicians. No differences in risk factors were identified to explain these differences. However, the absolute numbers were small and the sample underpowered to reliably detect associations. The BMI of CeAD patients was reportedly lower than that of healthy subjects [3] . Interestingly, in our CeAD cohort, there was a non-significant trend toward a lower BMI among physicians than among non-physicians ( table 1 : OR 0.88 [0.77–1.02]). Thus, one might speculate whether differences in constitution or life style between physicians and non-physicians might have contributed to our findings. The observation that CeAD with purely local symptoms was more frequent among physicians than among non-physicians suggests that many CeAD events (in non-physicians) remained undetected. Indeed, it was recently hypothesized that CeAD with mild or transient symptoms may easily remain unrecognized [5] .