Effects of revascularisation on evoked cerebral blood oxygenation responses in stroke patients

We demonstrated that ischemic strokes exhibit an increase of deoxyhemoglobin during activation. We evaluated the effect of revascu-larization on the abnormal evoked cerebral blood oxygenation (CBO) re-sponses in these patients, employing near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). We selected five patients who exhibited an increase of deoxyhemoglobin associated with increases of oxyhemoglobin and total hemoglobin during activation for this study. These patients showed marked reductions of base-line regional cerebral blood flow and cerebrovascular reserve capacity, which were improved 1 week after revascularization. Postoperative NIRS demonstrated that the increase of deoxyhemoglobin during activa-tion was not observed after revascularization. This preliminary study demonstrated that the abnormal evoked-CBO response in ischemic stroke patients could be improved by revascularization.