Aspirin in elderly atrial fibrillation patients.

Response In their letter, Bladin and Burns repeat previously published arguments, 1 without considering the particulars of our study. 2 They have cited us incorrectly several times, suggesting that they did not read our paper accurately: 1. "An absolute precision of ±0.1 mm. .. was. .. assumed by the authors." In fact, we stated that "the calipers could be adjusted in 0.1-mm graduations." 2. The "Doppler angle, which the authors omit to r e p o r t. .. " is actually listed in our Table 1. 3. "The unfortunate use of color duplex (rather than duplex-pulsed Doppler).. ." We have accurately described the use of the pulsed-Doppler technique in measuring angle-corrected flow velocities. Color duplex sonography means pulsed-Doppler measurement of flow velocities in vessels that are simultaneously depicted in the B-mode scan and the superimposed color Doppler image. 4. As to "the differences in flow between the CCA and ICA+ECA. .. no data are given that will indicate the accuracy of an individual measurement. .. " Since we could not list every measurement in tables, we displayed the main data in scatterplots to make individual measurements evident to the reader. Furthermore , in Table 4 we did not only show correlations between our long-term reproducibility measurements but also the differences between them. And finally, we pointed out why we consider the measurements of ICA and ECA flow volumes more reliable than those of the CCA. 5. Duplex measurements of the ICA were not taken at the origin but at 1.0 to 1.5 cm away from the bifurcation. At this site (which corresponds to the "distal internal carotid artery site" in the paper of Ku et al 3) no turbulences were detectable either in the color Doppler mode or in the pulsed Doppler spectrum, and the spectral broadening index was significantly lower (p<0.0001) than at the CCA recording site (cf Table 1 of our paper, statistic analysis unpublished). The "off axis" angle of carotid flow is of great importance at the origin of the ICA, especially when we consider maximum flow velocities or flow velocities at certain layers of flow. It is less important when time-averaged velocity (TAV), ie, the mean of all frequencies occurring above and below the baseline, is measured across the whole lumen. Given that the diameter of the vessel remains constant and a constant flow volume is transported along a vessel, TAV also has to remain …