Moyamoya disease diagnosis and treatment | Boston Children’s Hospital

Learn more about the Moyamoya Disease Program: http://www.bostonchildrens.org/centers-and-services/moyamoya-disease-program

Edward Robert Smith, MD, director of Pediatric Cerebrovascular Surgery at Boston Children's Hospital, illustrates Moyamoya disease and pial synangiosis, an operation developed at Boston Children’s to treat it.

Moyamoya is a disease of the blood vessels of the brain that leads to poor blood flow, oxygen starvation and potentially stroke. It is diagnosed by angiogram, on which the diseased vessels look like a “puff of smoke” (the meaning of moyamoya in Japanese).

As Dr. Smith explains in our Pediatric Playbook series, pial synangioisis takes a healthy blood vessel from the scalp and grafts it onto the surface of the brain. New blood vessels begin sprouting from it, giving the brain a new blood supply. The operation has been shown to reduce the 5-year risk of stroke from 60-90 percent to less than 4 percent.

For more information, call 617-919-1379 (international: +1-617-355-5209).