[Cerebral blood flow in syndrome of vertebral artery]

The paper presents the results of clinical-neurologic study of the indices of cerebral hemodynamics (ultrasonic dopplerography of major arteries of the head, transcranial dopplerography) in 114 patients aged 15-36 years with vertebral artery (VA) syndrome. In the clinical status both subjective manifestations and typical vertebral symptomatology prevailed. There were tendencies to changes of blood flow in extracranial arteries of the carotid system that differed in compression-irritative and reflex-angiospastic forms of VA syndrome. The most significant changes (decrease of blood flow velocity, increase of the indices of the kinematics of blood flow) were observed in vertebral and posterior cerebral arteries (PCA), especially in compression-irritative form of VA syndrome. Homolateral decrease of blood flow in PCA was characteristic for unilateral decrease of blood flow in VA. The results show an important role of the changes of cerebral hemodynamics in pathogenesis of the syndrome of VA.