Usefulness of Flow Direction and Velocity Measurement During Direct Revascularization Surgery for Patients with Moyamoya Disease

Direct revascularization surgery for moyamoya disease has been established as an effective and safe surgical treatment. But it is unclear that the relationship between the specific postoperative clinical course and drastic change of cerebral hemodynamics resulted from the bypass procedure. Despite recent studies demonstrating the techniques to measure local cerebral blood flow intraoperatively using various instruments, there are no reports in the literature that investigate the correlation between intraoperative change of flow direction/velocity (not volume) in recipient artery and postoperative cerebral hemodynamics and clinical course. In this study, we measured the flow direction/velocity of recipient artery intraoperatively using Doppler flowmeter before and after bypass surgery. The results throw light on the association of cerebral hemodynamics and postoperative clinical course in patients with moyamoya disease.