Subclavian to middle cerebral artery saphenous vein bypass graft.

A variation of an extracranial-intracranial arterial bypass is presented. The subclavian artery is used as the donor vessel and the saphenous vein as the graft; thus, a bypass to a cortical branch of the middle cerebral artery can be accomplished. The advantage of this modification is that the saphenous vein, when tunneled subcutaneously behind the ear, is positioned in a straight line from the donor to the recipient vessel. Since the vein lies in the axis of head rotation, turning of the head causes little displacement of the graft, as opposed to a graft from the common carotid artery to the middle cerebral artery. An additional advantage over the superficial temporal artery to middle cerebral artery bypass is the large flow obtained immediately after anastomosis.