Abstract
During intracranial vascular surgery neurosurgeons experience that the tone of the vessel changes in relation to the systemic blood pressure through forceps held in their fingers. On the basis of such experiences we have designed forceps with a pair of strain gauges to measure local blood pressure of the intracranial arteries. Blood pressure of arteries larger than 0.8 mm in diameter can be measured by holding them directly with this forceps. This technique was utilized in cases of STA-MCA anastomosis, AVM and aneurysm operations. The degree of success of the vascular anastomosis could be demonstrated quantitatively by the difference in the pressure before and after the anastomosis procedure. In the operation of AVM, the rate of obliteration of the feeding arteries could be discerned by measurement of the pressure of the draining vessels at each step of the procedure. In the aneurysm operation, application of the strain gauge forceps helped detect the stenosis of the parent artery after clipping of ligation of a wide neck aneurysm.
