The Failure of Intravenous Digital Subtraction Angiography in Replacing Carotid Arteriography

Excerpt

When digital subtraction angiography was introduced commercially in 1980, it promised to accomplish for vascular disease what computed tomography was doing for soft tissue pathology: namely, the relatively noninvasive identification of disease with sufficient accuracy to obviate more invasive diagnostic evaluation. Digital subtraction angiography has been used primarily in the evaluation of suspected cerebrovascular disease, with fully two thirds of early and subsequent intravenous digital subtraction procedures used to evaluate the extracranial cerebral vasculature. As one of a series of reports that comprise the Office of Technology Assessment's evaluation of medical technology and the costs of the Medicare Program, Case