Transcranial sonography as a diagnostic tool for Parkinson's disease: a pilot study in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

UNLABELLED In Brazil there is no systematic study on Transcranial Sonography (TCS), a neuroimaging method that depicts echogenic deep brain structures using ultrasound. OBJECTIVE To establish the percentage of subjects with permissive temporal windows and to address the ability of TCS of the substantia nigra (SN) to distinguish parkinsonian patients in a Brazilian sample. METHOD We performed TCS using the Acuson X300 (Siemens, Germany) in 37 individuals: 23 with Parkinson's disease (PD) and 14 healthy controls. RESULTS 10.8% of subjects had insufficient temporal acoustic bone windows. SN echogenic areas were larger in patients (mean ± SD, 0.31 ± 0.08 cm(2)) compared to controls (mean ± SD, 0.17 ± 0.02 cm(2)). TCS accurately identified 88.2% of PD patients. CONCLUSION A large proportion of Brazilians seem to be eligible for TCS. An expressive number of PD patients could be diagnosed by TCS based on an expanded SN echogenic area. However, the current data is preliminary and must be corroborated by larger studies.