Open AccessComputed tomography patterns of intracranial infarcts in a Ghanaian tertiary facility
Author(s) -
Emmanuel Kobina Mesi Edzie,
Klenam Dzefi-Tettey,
Philip Narteh Gorleku,
Edmund Kwakye Brakohiapa,
Peter AppiahThompson,
Kwasi Agyen-Mensah,
Michael Kofi Amedi,
Frank Quarshie,
Evans Boadi,
Joshua Mensah Kpobi,
Richard Ato Edzie,
Abdul Raman Asemah
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
ghana medical journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2616-163X
pISSN - 0016-9560
DOI - 10.4314/gmj.v56i1.5
Subject(s) - medicine , computed tomography , radiology , retrospective cohort study , diabetes mellitus , white matter , magnetic resonance imaging , endocrinology
Objective: To determine the Computed Tomography (CT) patterns of intracranial infarctsDesign: A retrospective cross-sectional study.Setting: The CT scan unit of the Radiology Department, Cape Coast Teaching Hospital (CCTH), from February 2017 to February 2021Participants: One thousand, one hundred and twenty-five patients with non-contrast head CT scan diagnosis of is-chaemic strokes, consecutively selected over the study period without any exclusionsMain outcome measures: Patterns of non-contrast head CT scan of ischaemic strokes.Results: About 50.6% of the study participants were females with an average age of 62.59±13.91 years. Males were affected with ischaemic strokes earlier than females (p<0.001). The risk factors considered were, hyperlipidaemia (59.5%), hypertension (49.0%), Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM-2) (39.6%) and smoking (3.0%). The three commonest ischaemic stroke CT scan features were wedge-shaped hypodensity extending to the edge of the brain (62.8%), sulcal flattening/effacement (57.6%) and loss of grey-white matter differentiation (51.0%), which were all significantly as-sociated with hypertension. Small deep brain hypodensities, the rarest feature (2.2%), had no significant association with any of the risk factors considered in the study.Conclusion: Apart from the loss of grey-white matter differentiation, there was no significant association between the other CT scan features and sex. Generally, most of the risk factors and the CT scan features were significantly associated with increasing age.