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Primary care physicians who evaluate patients for carotid artery disease should remember that a potential downstream consequence of a positive result from noninvasive testing is invasive angiography, which carries risks for neurologic complications. In this article, Mayo Clinic researchers report complication rates for 19,826 patients who underwent diagnostic cerebral angiography between 1981 and 2003. The most common indications for the procedure were evaluation of atherosclerotic cerebrovascular disease (38%), tumor (26%), and subarachnoid hemorrhage (12%).
Neurologic complications occurred within 24 hours in 2.63% of cases. They included transient ischemic attack (TIA; 2.09%), reversible deficits lasting more than 24 hours (0.36%), perman…