Symptomatic Intracranial Steal

Abstract

The phenomenon of shunting of blood in association with various intracranial lesions is well known; however, usually clinical symptoms are attributable to the lesion and not to the redistribution of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). We report three patients investigated by angiography and rCBF studies in whom symptoms appeared to be due to a hemodynamic steal within one cerebral hemisphere, between hemispheres, and from the brain into a tumor, respectively.

Multimodality Treatment of Giant Intracranial Arteriovenous Malformations

“…Giant AVMs can manifest with any of the above symptoms but also are more likely to cause symptoms through cerebrovascular "steal" or venous hypertension. The large volume of blood shunting through the AVMs can cause relative hypoperfusion in the surrounding neurological tissue, leading to ischemia (17,22,36,42). It is hypothesized that lower blood pressure within the arterial feeders of the AVM compared with the surrounding brain results in preferential shunting of blood to the AVM from normal brain.…”

Functional MRI in the Presurgical Evaluation of Patients with Brain Tumors: Characterization of the Statistical Threshold

“…The presence of tumor has also been shown to have global vascular effects upon the brain, such as the 'steal' phenomenon [12,13] . Loss of autoregulation has also been demonstrated at sites remote from tumor [14] .…”

Minimally Invasive and Noninvasive Diagnosis and Therapy in Critically Ill and Injured Patients

“…A new type of CT scanning using xenon enhancement has been used to quantitate cerebral blood flow. 117,118 This technique has been applied to patients with cerebral steal syndrome and at least 1 patient with a traumatic carotid-cavernous fistula in which the area where the blood flow was altered was identified for subsequent craniotomy. 113…”