Cerebral microbleeds: A clinical issue for cardiologists?

Some advances in technologies can help clinicians to better understand diseases and to modify their attitude towards management of their patients in terms of therapeutic strategies. Cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) are recently discovered lesions that have had a significant effect on neurologists' conceptions about cerebral vasculopathies, and about which many questions still need to be answered for clinical practice. CMBs were first described in the 1990s, after the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences called gradient echo T2*. CMBs appear as small round hypointense lesions with a black appearance and a diameter of <5-10 mm; they are typically located either in the deep brain (basal ganglia) or in the corticosubcortical regions (lobar CMBs). In some patients, the CMB topography is mixed (Fig. 1). To distinguish between a CMB