Once the blood vessels in the brain become blocked, it will cause a stroke, and due to the lack of effective treatment measures, the current treatment methods for stroke are very limited. Currently, experts in Nanjing are applying “bypass surgery” to the brain, taking a blood vessel from the scalp and attaching it to a large artery in the brain to “supply blood” to the ischemic brain. This operation, which sounds almost impossible, was successfully completed recently through the joint efforts of neurosurgery and orthopedic microsurgery. This is also the first case of intracranial and extracranial vascular bypass surgery in Suwan area. The patient was a 31-year-old young man from Bengbu, Anhui Province, who often felt dizzy and had weakness in his limbs, and had already had a stroke when he was admitted to the hospital. He was diagnosed with ischemic cerebral hemorrhage caused by “smog”. The so-called smog disease refers to the occlusion of large intracranial arteries for unknown reasons. In normal people, blood vessels are like branches of a tree, with a “trunk” and clear “bifurcations,” and blood from the trunk reaches all parts of the brain through the branches. In smog patients, however, the “trunk” of the aorta is blocked without a bifurcation, and at the end of the aorta, numerous capillaries grow, which look like a cloud of smoke in the angiogram. The name “smoke disease” sounds beautiful, but in fact it is very dangerous and is the main cause of stroke in young people. What’s even scarier is that the trend of “smog” is gradually getting younger and younger, and a 5-year-old child with cerebral infarction was admitted to Gulou Hospital because of “smog. Surgery: Scalp blood vessel “bypass” for the brain blood supply Due to the blockage of blood vessels, long-term ischemia in the brain, the key to treatment is to restore the blood supply to the brain. Dr. Yongbo Yang said that they tried a new surgical method, based on the “heart bypass” technique, to build a “bridge” between the occluded artery and other blood vessels, so that the bridge vessel can supply blood to the blocked artery. Experts believe that a scalp blood vessel can be connected to the blocked blood vessel in the brain, allowing the scalp blood vessel to supply blood directly to the brain. During the surgery, the experts chose a relatively thick vessel on the scalp. In this regard, Dr. Yang Yongbo explained that the scalp attached to the skull, unlike the skin of other parts of the body, is very thick, with a total of six layers, “We took a hair-thin blood vessel in the innermost layer.” Immediately after, the specialist opened the skull for the patient, cut a hole in the skull the size of a grain of rice, just like “threading a needle”, the separated blood vessel, through the small hole, penetrated into the brain, and the brain artery vascular sutured together. Brain surgery itself is extremely complex and delicate, and often “involves a hair” to “move the whole body”. Since there are countless capillaries near the blocked artery, no matter which one is broken during the surgery, there is a possibility of hemorrhage. The operation lasted eight hours, and the doctor embroidered the operation under a microscope. Because the blood vessels were so thin, the sutures were specially made, only one meter to the minus tenth power, a unit smaller than a micron – “nano”. Prospects: Excellent results for patients with cerebral infarction The operation has been completed for one week and the patient has recovered well and can already walk on the ground. Outwardly, like a normal person, no traces of the surgery can be seen. Dr. Yang Yongbo said that because of the difficulty of the surgery, only 20 cases of cerebrovascular bypass surgery have been carried out in the country, and this is the first case of vascular bypass surgery successfully completed in Jiangsu. Experts pointed out that the smoke disease is only one kind of cerebral infarction, and the significance of the surgery is that later on it can be solved by “brain bypass surgery” to solve the problem of similar cerebral vascular blockage, which is a very effective way to treat cerebral infarction. Experts say that at present, China has 2 million new brain infarction patients every year, many of whom do not have a good prognosis, and this kind of surgery can greatly improve the quality of survival of patients in the future.