Objective: To investigate the accuracy and usefullness of CTA in peripheral arterial disease (PAD) of lower extremity arterial system.

Material and Method: DSA and CTA examinations were made for 73 cases with PAD. Arterial system was evaluated by dividing into 25 segments. The images of all sections in two examinations are evaluated in terms of diagnostic quality. Suprapopliteal-popliteal segments’s stenoocclusive lesions, which are imagined in sufficient diagnostic quality were graded in 5 categories. Infrapopliteal segments were evaluated according to presence and absence of occlusion. Besides presence of calsification was evaluated in segments with sufficient diagnostic quality. The sensitivity, specificity, positive, negative predictiv value and accuracy ratios were calculated for determination of lesions with CTA. In evaluation the correlation between DSA and CTA was investigated with McNemar test.

Results: Images in 1701 of 1772 segments were found as sufficient, 71 segments were found in insufficient diagnostic quality for evaluation with two examinations. The examinations in 1250 (95.06%) suprapopliteal-popliteal segments revealed an accordance in terms of the two techniques. In the detection of arterial occlusion, sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of CTA were 96%, 99.6% and 99.1%. There was no significant difference between two examinations in description of the lesions in all segments (p >0,05). In the description of calcifications, there was a significant differences between two examination methods in suprapopliteal-popliteal segments (p <0,05). Significant difference was not present between two examination methods in description of calcifications in infrapopliteal segments (p >0,05).

Conclusion: CTA examination can be used in PAD of lower extremity in order to evaluate the arterial system due to its’ minimally invasive, easy to reach and high accuracy rate features.