What Is The Best Treatment For Moyamoya Disease?

Moyamoya disease is a type of progressive disorder, which affects your brain’s blood vessels. The disease characterizes stenosis i.e. narrowing and/or occlusion i.e. closing of carotid artery present in your skull. This is a big artery responsible to supply blood to your brain. Because of this, various tiny blood vessels at the base region of your brain open up apparently to supply blood to its distal to compensate the caused blockage.

Doctors call the tiny vessels as Moyamoya vessels, because of which they name the disease as Moyamoya disease. Inadequate blood supply also results in reduced delivery of oxygen to your brain and oxygen deprivation results in various signs related to Moyamoya.

Doctors determine the best treatment for Moyamoya disease based on your individual condition. The main objective behind the treatment in this case is to reduce or let you managing your symptoms, improve in the flow of blood and reduce your risks related to any severe complication, which include an ischemic stroke caused due to lacking in the flow of blood, bleeding in the brain known as intracerebral hemorrhage and death. Treatment options thus include the following-

Doctors prescribe you certain medicines to reduce your risks related to stroke and to help in seizure control. These are as follows-

Calcium Channel Blockers– Calcium channel blockers or calcium antagonist medicines aim to improve your symptoms related to headache and possibly reduce your symptoms associated with TIAs.

Blood Thinners– Whenever you undergo diagnosis with Moyamoya disease, you initially do not experience any symptom or mild symptoms only. In this situation, your doctor recommends blood thinners, including Aspirin to avoid your stroke.

Anti-Seizure Medications– If your child or you accompany seizure disorders, your doctor may prescribe you anti-seizure medications. (1)

When your Moyamoya symptoms become worse or your test results show evidence related to low blood flow, your doctor recommends you for revascularization surgery. According to revascularization surgery, your surgeon will bypass blocked arteries to help in the restoration of blood flow to your brain. For this, doctors use direct procedure, indirect procedure or a combination of the two.

In case of direct revascularization surgery for Moyamoya, surgeons stitch or suture your scalp artery directly to your brain artery based on superficial temporal artery towards the middle of cerebral artery type of bypass surgery. In this way, revascularization surgery increases the flow of blood to the brain in no time. However, because of the attached blood vessels’ size, direct revascularization surgery is somewhat difficult in case of children. Moreover, direct bypass surgery involves many complications, including the problem of stroke.

In case of indirect revascularization surgical procedure for Moyamoya, doctors fulfill the prime objective to increase the flow of blood to your brain in a gradual manner with time.

In case of EDAS for Moyamoya, your surgeon will dissect or separate an artery belonging to your scalp area by about several inches. He even makes a temporary opening in the skull directly below your artery and sutures the respective intact scalp artery towards the brain surface. In this way, EDS helps in growing of blood vessels from your artery in the brain with time. Surgeons even replace the bone as well as close the skull opening.

In case of EMS for Moyamoya, your surgeon will dissect or separate a temple area muscle present in the forehead and later on, places it on the brain surface via an opening in the skull. This step also helps in restoring the flow of blood.

Your surgeon will perform the combination of EDAS and EMS procedures. Accordingly, he separates/dissects temple region muscle of the forehead and places it on the brain surface after attaching the respective scalp artery to it.

References

https-//rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/moyamoya-disease/

Also Read:

• Moyamoya Disease: Stages, Causes, Symptoms, Treatment
• Prognosis Of Moyamoya Disease
• Is Moyamoya Disease Congenital?
• What Is Moyamoya Disease Surgery?