Local cerebral blood perfusion correlates with nerve fibre integrity in transient ischemic attack patients with middle cerebral artery stenosis: a pilot study

Jiang Wu, Ping Liu, Jie Lei, Jia Liu, Hong-Liang Zhang

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DOI: 10.4236/health.2010.26079                

Abstract

Recent advances in neuroimaging contribute a lot to the accurate diagnosis and evaluation of cerebrovascular diseases. To explore the relationship among blood perfusion, metabolism and brain structure integrity, 6 Chinese transient ischemic attack (TIA) patients with middle cerebral artery (MCA) stenosis were examined by xenon-enhanced computed tomography (Xe-CT), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to compare cerebral blood flow (CBF) values, (choline + creatine)/ N-acetyl aspartate [(Cho + Cr)/NAA] values and fractional anisotropy (FA) values in the MCA territory. Our results showed that CBF values significantly decreased in the ipsilateral basal ganglion regions in all 5 cases with unilateral MCA stenosis, with a corresponding decrease of FA values in the same region. In conclusion, decreased blood perfusion may indicate nerve fibre damage in the dominating regions of stenosed arteries.

Keywords

Transient Ischemic Attack; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Xenon-Enhanced Computed Tomography

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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