Acute thromboembolic occlusion of the basilar artery accounts for 6% to 10% of large-vessel stroke in humans. Because of the brain region supplied by this artery, the case fatality rate is the highest for all ischemic stroke subtypes, ranging from 40% to 86%. Patients who undergo successful recanalization of the basilar artery by intra-arterial thrombolysis have lower mortality of approximately...

Delayed cerebral vasospasm after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) may be due, in part, to altered regulation of arterial smooth muscle contraction. Contraction of cerebral arteries to serotonin is augmented after experimental SAH. We hypothesized that activation of Rho-associated kinase (Rho kinase) contributes to augmented contraction of cerebral arteries to serotonin after SAH. Autologous arteri...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Fibrinolysis with local intraarterial urokinase infusion for basilar artery thrombosis has been associated with a low rate of spontaneous symptomatic cerebral hemorrhage, even when patients have been treated late in the course of symptoms. Because urokinase is presently unavailable in the United States, this study was undertaken to determine the frequency of spontaneous c...

The basilar artery is the most important artery in the posterior cerebral circulation. In the cases of stroke due to acute basilar artery occlusion the mortality rate is significantly higher if compared to all the stroke cases. Arterial wall stiffening is characteristic of ageing arteries and in many investigations arterial wall stiffening is related to the loss of the elastic component in the ...

Dissection of the basilar artery caused sudden coma and death in a 40-year-old man. Atypical clinical features were explained at necropsy. A ventral dissection of the artery within its outer layers resulted in destruction of the pontine tegmentum with sparing of the basis pontis. An unsuspected defect in the internal elastic lamina in the left internal carotid artery was also found suggesting a...

To evaluate the efficacy of magnetic resonance imaging in brainstem stroke, we studied 21 cases of clinically definite brainstem ischemic stroke with brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and conventional computed tomography (CT). MRI demonstrated brainstem lesions in 79% of the cases (16.5 out of 21), while CT revealed 33% (7 out of 21) when cases with suspicious lesions counted as 0.5. Altho...