Table 3.

Report details and chance for near-occlusion to be perceived by the clinician in routine practice

Diagnostic term used	Basis for term use	Problem	n (% of all)	Perceived (%)
Near-occlusion or similar	Small distal ICA	None	21 (20%)	9 (43%)*
	Small distal ICA, also percent diagnosis	Mutually exclusive diagnoses	2 (2%)	1 (50%)
	Severe stenosis. Small distal ICA also mentioned	Accidentally correct terminology and incorrect synthesis of information	7 (7%)†	3 (43%)
	Severe stenosis. Small distal ICA not mentioned	Accidentally correct terminology and missed small distal ICA or failed to mention small distal ICA	2 (2%)†	0 (0%)
	Unclear	Too short report for data extraction	1 (1%)	0 (0%)
Conventional stenosis or similar	Small distal ICA associated with stenosis, but not as a separate diagnosis	Incorrect terminology	7 (7%)	0 (0%)
	Small distal ICA mentioned but not associated with stenosis	Incorrect synthesis of information or incorrect terminology	16 (15%)	4 (25%)‡
	Small distal ICA not mentioned	Missed small distal ICA or failed to mention small distal ICA	33 (32%)	2 (6%)‡
Occlusion	Contrast not seen in or beyond stenosis	Missed faint distal contrast	6 (6%)	0 (0%)
	Contrast seen beyond but not in stenosis	Incorrect synthesis of information	8 (8%)	0 (0%)
Thrombosis	Appearance	Missed stenosis as cause	1 (1%)	0 (0%)
All cases			104 (100%)	19 (18%)

ICA, internal carotid artery

*Nine of 12 (75%) near-occlusion missed despite being sole and correctly based diagnosis on CTA was affected by a conventional stenosis diagnosis on ultrasound

^†In these nine cases, it was clear that stenosis impression, almost occluded, was the cause of using a near-occlusion or similar term, not that the distal artery was small

^‡Four of six (67%) near-occlusions perceived despite not diagnosed on CTA were affected by near-occlusion diagnosis on ultrasound