Short summary

Clinical practice made me suspect that elongated and tortuous iliac arteries may cause low back pain or symptoms irradiating to the lower extremities. Continuously screening my departments production of out-patient CT scans of the abdomen, I select patients with tortuous iliac arteries (study group) and with normal iliac arteries (control group). By sending an official e-mail via redcap, patients are invited to fill out a questionnaire about low back pain and symptoms from the lower extremities.

Rationale

It is well known that infrarenal aortic aneurisms or iliac artery aneurisms can cause back pain / mimic symptoms of degenerative lumbar disease. I hypothesize that the augmented pulsation resulting from deflection of blood flow in a tortuous artery may have a similar effect. In keeping with this interpretation, my group has shown an association between tortuosity of the internal carotid artery and vocal cord palsy.

Description of the cohort

Out-patients aged 40 - 80 y referred to CT of the abdomen for suspicion of unspecified abdominal pathology.

Exclusion criteria

-malignant disease

-abdominal or iliac aneurisms, or patients treated for these conditions

-CT findings of significant degenerative lumbar disease

Data and biological material

1 - CT scans

The tortuosity of the participants' iliac arteries is graded on the basis of CT findings (grading based on vessel angulation, direction of bend, and presence of impression into psoas muscle)

The results of this grading af correlated with

2- questionnaire data

Publications associated with the project

Extracranial internal carotid artery tortuosity may cause vocal cord palsy. Maier J, Abdulhady L, Glad H. Acta Oto-Laryngol 2019, 139(3): 304-308