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  Background & Objectives: Cerebrovascular diseases are the most common disabiling neurologic disorders and the third cause of death in the population over 45 years of age. Most of the strokes in adults are ischemic and almost one-fifth of them are due to intra- or extracranial internal carotid artery stenosis. Ultrasonography is a noninvasive, cost-effective and safe technique for evaluation of intra or extracranial vessels that is available in two methods: TCD and carotid Duplex. The present research is an attempt to investigate the appropriatens and comprehensiveness of TCD in diagnosing symptomatic significant carotid stenosis.

  Methods : This descriptive-analytical study was conducted on fifty patients admitted to the neurology ward of Imam Hospital who underwent both carotid duplex and TCD examination. Variables of blood flow velocities, collateral flow evidences and degree of carotid stenosis were assessed with both methods. The data were analyzed by SPSS (ver.11.5) using T.test, Chi-square and Fisher test.

  Results : 34 patieuts were. Male mean age of the patients was 66.70% of the subjects were above 65 and 68% of them had a history of hypertension. No statistically significant difference was seen between systolic and diatolic blood flow velocity in internal carotid artery and pulsatile index obtnined from reported by TCD and carotid Duplex. There was no statistically significant difference between the percentage of stenosis TCD finding of the patients with carotid stenosis showed collateral flow in 78.57% of the cases.

  Conclusion: Acceptable correlation of the flow velocity parameters and the percentage of carotid stenosis between TCD and Carotid Duplex results showed that the primary performance of TCD to diagnose significant carotid stenosis (that causes hemodynamic disorder) and screen ischemic cerebrovascular accident is a reliable and effective method, but for precise determination of stenosis, plaque typing and for diagnosing stenisis below 50% the performance of carotid duplex study is also necessary and to complemantory TCD.

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 Background & Objectives: Atherosclerotic stenosis of carotid territory is the most common cause of ischemic stroke. A higher frequency rate of intracranial arterial stenosis in African and Far East races has been reported.

 Methods: This double center and prospective study was carried out in 304 geriatric ischemic stroke patients admitted in Mackenzie Hospital, Canada and the same number of geriatric ischemic stroke patients with similar sex ratio admitted in Valie-Asr Hospital, Birjand during 2003-2005. The cause of brain infarction in carotid territory was made by neurologists was vasular origin. All of the patients underwent transcranial and carotid doppler studies based on the standard method by a neurosonologist. Topography of arteriosclerotic stenosis in bilateral Internal Carotid Artery (ICA) territories was determined. Fisher exact test served for statistical analysis and p<0.05 declared as significant.

 Results: In Iranian group 71 patients (23.3%) and in North American group 83 patients (27.3) had extracranial ICA stenosis without a significant difference p=0.3, df=1, OR=0.81, 95%CI(0.56- 1.17). Sever ³ 70% extracranial ICA stenosis was found in 14 Iranian patients (4.6%) and 23 North American patients (7.5%) without a significant difference . p=0.17, df=1, OR=0.59, 95%CI(0.3-1.77). In Iranian group, 14 cases (4.6%) and in North American group 5 cases (1.6%) had intracranial ICA territory stenosis which had a significant difference p=0.038, df=1, OR=2.9, 95%CI(1-8.1). Mixed intracranial and extracranial ICA territory stenosis was found in 2 Iranian and 1 North American patients.

 Conclusion: Atherosclerotic stenosis of intracranial ICA territory is more common in Iranian than in North American populations.

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  Background & Objectives: Excess body fat percentage is one of the risk factors in the progression of chronic diseases. Anthropometric indices of obesity are screening tools to determine subjects at risk of cardiovascular disease all over the world. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between abdominal obesity and the early stage of atherosclerosis by Carotid Intima- Media Thickness (CIMT) on women .

  Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 100 healthy women aged 18–50 year. Anthropometric indices were measured and calculated according to standard protocol. Cut off points for waist circumference (WC), waist to hip ratio (WHR) and waist to height ratio (WHtR) were 88 cm, 0.8 and 0.5 respectively Carotid Intima- Media Thickness was determined by using non-invasive ultrasound as an indicator of early stage of atherosclerosis. Subjects with mean CIMT≤0.8 mm and CIMT>0.8 mm were considered as "normal subjects" and "subjects at risk", respectively.

  Results: Average age of subjects was 30.96±8.1 and the mean of WC, WHR, WHtR and CIMT were 95±0.17, 0.87±0.08, 0.61±0.11 and 0.63±0.15, respectively. All abdominal anthropometric indices significantly associated with mean CIMT. Waist circumference with cut off point of 88 Cm had sum of sensitivity and specificity higher than WHR and WHtR.

  Conclusion: Waist circumference index with cut off point of 88 cm is better than WHR and WHtR to identify subjects at high risk of atherosclerosis.

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 Background & objectives: Ultrasonography as a non-invasive, inexpensive and generally available method has been used to measure of the intima-media thickness (IMT) of carotid arteries changes and finding its relationship with cardiovascular risk factors and vascular diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate the carotid arterial wall thickness (IMT) changes based on clinical and para-clinical indexes in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM).
Methods: In this descriptive-analytical study, 100 patients with type 2 DM were randomly selected from all patients admitted to diabetes clinics and were considered in terms of clinical and paraclinical indexes of systemic atherosclerosis. Both types of IMT (TA and TB) were measured by ultrasonography in six locations of the carotid system. The intensity of these two values was calculated compared with the normal IMT and also, its relationship with clinical and para clinical indexes were determined. The results were statistically analyzed using SPSS software version 19. 
Results: In this study, more than 80% of patients had IMT upper than normal. There was a significant difference between the severe increase of IMT and effective variables such as sex, smoking, physical inactivity, dyslipidemia and poor blood glucose control.
Conclusions: This study showed that the DM and factors such as sex, smoking, physical inactivity had a significant effect on the increasing IMT compared to the normal range.