Abstract

FONTANA, Horacio et al. La circulación cerebral en condiciones normales y patológicas: Parte III: el flujo sanguíneo en los vasos de la base. Rev. argent. neurocir. [online]. 2007, vol.21, n.4. ISSN 1850-1532.

Circulation in elastic, branching, curved tubes is complex. Laminar and turbulent flow are extreme and infrequent forms of different circulation types named disturbed flow. Pulsatility also contributes to it. Those types of flow produce enrgy loss, transferred in part, to the arterial wall. Velocity, density and diameter of the vessel favor a tidy flow, viscosity instead, acts inversely. The intima reacts to the low shear stress generating pads thar reinforce the lateral faces of bifurcations and less in the vertex, where the strss is maximal. The hemodynamic forces that act upon the vertex are lateral pressure, hemodynamic pressure, that sums to the lateral, the kinetic energy of blood, and the shear stress. The bifurcations of cerebral vessels have weak points at the vertex and lateral faces, characterized by absence of the muscle coat of the media. At this point, the wall is compound of the connective tissue of adventicia, the elastica interna, and the intima. These weak points can be found from birth, but grow in number and width with age, and are larger in patients with aneurysms, or with risk factors such as hypertension or policystic kidneys. Aneurysms grow at the vertex of bifurcations or branchings by the effect of shear stress and hemodynamic pressure, in vessels with change of the geometry of the bifurcation because of aging. Degeneration of the internal elastic lamina seems necessary, and is the consequence of the effect of those forces. Increase of the transmural pressure from different causes, and increase of the hemodinamic requirement by assymetries of the polygon of Willis could be necessary conditions to its growth. Aneurysms would develope because of the impairement of the capacity to damp the pulsatility of the cerebral circulation because of the progressive enhancing of the rigidity of the cerebral vessels and the decline of the other mechanisms of "closed box" of the skull. As atherosclerosis, cerebral berry aneurysms could be considered a degenerative disease of the arterial wall, but in this case for excessive requirement of flow, the opposite to the first.

Keywords : Circulation of the basal brain arteries; Origin of the crebral aneurysms.

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