Reliability of clinical diagnosis of the symptomatic vascular territory in patients with recent transient ischemic attack or minor stroke.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Knowledge of the vascular territory of a recent transient ischemic attack or minor stroke determines appropriate investigations and the need for territory-specific interventions such as endarterectomy and stenting. However, there are few published data on the accuracy of clinical assessment of the vascular territory. METHODS We studied agreement of clinical diagnosis of vascular territory in consecutive patients with transient ischemic attack or minor stroke with diffusion-weighted MRI who had an acute ischemic lesion(s) in a single vascular territory (determined by a neuroradiologist). Three independent neurologists (one had seen the patients, the others had a clinical summary) diagnosed the most likely vascular territory (carotid or vertebrobasilar) for each patient blind to brain imaging. RESULTS One hundred thirty-three (28.0%) of 476 patients had a high signal lesion on diffusion-weighted imaging of whom 115 (86.5%) had a minor stroke and 18 (13.5%) a transient ischemic attack. Interobserver agreement (kappa statistic) on the territory ranged from 0.46 to 0.60. The agreement with diffusion-weighted imaging was only moderate (observer 1: kappa=0.54, 95% CI=0.36 to 0.72; observer 2: 0.48, 0.31 to 0.64; observer 3: 0.48, 0.28 to 0.67). Only the presence of visual symptoms improved the accuracy of the vascular territory diagnosis (range of kappa: 0.63 to 0.77) but not the presence of motor, speech, or sensory symptoms. Sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of vertebrobasilar territory ranged between 54.2% and 70.8% and 84.4% to 91.7%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The reliability of clinical diagnosis of the vascular territory is only moderate, highlighting the importance of sensitive brain imaging after transient ischemic attack or minor stroke. Further imaging-based research is required to determine the optimal clinical diagnostic criteria for classification of the vascular territory.