Cerebral injury predicted by transcranial Doppler ultrasonography but not electroencephalography during carotid endarterectomy.

When shunts are selectively used during carotid endarterectomy, the adequacy of collateral cerebral blood flow (CBF) after the carotid artery is clamped is determined by monitors based on different physiologic measurements. In this series of three patients, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure neuronal electrical activity and transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (TCD) to measure CBF velocity. In each of our cases, the EEG was unchanged from preclamp values, while TCD CBF velocity was dramatically reduced. All three patients had transient neuropsychometric or neurologic changes after surgery, which resolved.