The effect of reconstructive vascular surgery on clinical status, quantitative EEG and cerebral blood flow in patients with cerebral ischaemia. A three month follow-up study in operated and unoperated stroke patients.

Follow-up studies over a period of 3 months were carried out on 100 patients with a unilateral ischaemia in the territory of the middle cerebral artery. Twenty-six patients underwent an STA-MCA bypass operation and 23 patients, a carotid endarterectomy. Fifty-one unoperated patients served as a reference group. A clinical examination, quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG) and cerebral blood flow study (CBF) were performed before, 2 weeks after and 3 months after surgery. In the unoperated patients these examinations were carried out shortly after admission, 3 weeks later and 3 months thereafter. In the unoperated group, a highly significant improvement of clinical score and qEEG was found, but there were no changes in CBF values. The bypass patients showed a transient deterioration of clinical score and qEEG after surgery. Further, over the 3 month post-operative period, the bypass patients and the endarterectomy patients showed no improvement in CBF and qEEG. Thus, a beneficial effect of reconstructive surgery over the period studied could not be demonstrated.