Cerebral blood flow in patients undergoing microanastomosis for modification for prevention of stroke

The high incidence of stroke has been considered and the importance of measuring cerebral blood flow (CBF) in patients with transient ischemic attacks has been emphasized. A brief description has been given of the non-invasive method of measuring CBF using a brief bolus injection of 133xenon into any convenient arm vein. The values of CBFg = 75 +/- 8 and CBFw = 24 +/- 2 in ml per 100 g per M compared closely to those obtained by the internal carotid method of measurement. Cerebral blood flow in the gray matter, CBFg is the more sensitive measurement and is used almost exclusively to evaluate patients undergoing microneurosurgical anastomosis for cerebral ischemia in an attempt to prevent or modify stroke. The post operative studies in patients who had a pre operative depression of CBFg greater than 2 S.D. showed improvement in both the frontal and parietal regions. The latter was more significant with p less than 0.04 using paired t-tests.