Hey,
Has anyone had the surgery on the back of the brain? If so was it sucessful and do you recommend having it done? also does anyone have vision problems? My daughter molly's vision has gone from 20/20 to 2100!!
I am very concerned because the vision is controled by the occipital lobe in the back of the skull! she has had a few events TIA like with depth perception. The optomitrist asked if they found any toumers on her Mri?
any info is helpful?
Thanks, charl(mollys mom)

Hi Charl, my name is Patti.  My 12-year old son has MoyaMoya.  He had surgery on his left side a few years ago.  The doctor says that the artery in the back of his brain has narrowed - but it is not closed.  He is not recommending surgery now because blood still gets through.  In addition, Dr Scott (you can read about him on this board) said that the surgery in the back of the brain is more difficult than the surgery that most of the people communicating on this board have had.  I don't know exactly what 'more difficult' means.

With that said, my son has many vision problems.  He is excessively farsighted, has strabismis, and something else that I can't recall right now.  (My head hurts.)  He had surgery for the strabismis when he was 4.  He sees out of both eyes - but he only sees out of one eye at a time.  That means he has no depth perception - no stereo vision - he doesn't see in 3-D.  He was legally blind when he was little, but he sees well now with glasses.

I hope this helps in some way.  I wish you the best!

You may be tired of hearing this, but I would recommend a visit with Dr. Scott in Boston....God Bless

Thank you patti,
My daughter molly, also 12 had both surgeries with Dr. Scott in Boston in may of 06. She has recently had a TIA and her vision has gone from 20/20 to 20/100 and she had trouble with visual color tests (where you pick a number out of the colored dots)she thought most of the examples were shades of grey. Her TIA was brought on by deficit testing at school, visual spatial and visual memory tests. I asked the school to test her after reading here about neuropsyche testing. We are waiting to hear from DR. Scott, our hospital took its time getting him the MRA. I just wanted to hear any info on complications after surgery.
Thanks again for responding.
Charl(Molly's Mom)

hi there, i've been meaning to reply to this thread for a while...
as far as i know there have no been any bypasses (direct or indirect) performed on the vertebrobasilar arteries at the "back of the brain".. this is due to the location of these arteries and their proximity and position rel to the brain stem etc.... prety much it's impossible to get to them to do a direct bypass, and difficult - as well as the added fact that it takes longer to have an effect - to do a muscle transplant bypass...
i too have severely narrowed blood vessels in this area, to the point where my surgeon thought they couldn't possibly be any narrower.... i have had both direct bypasses performed on the left and right which have been extremely successful... at this stage it doesn't seem like i will need any more surgery.. but my surgeon is prepared to do a muscle transplant bypass if it becomes necessary...
i used to suffer from very regular visual tia's... where my vision would black out in either or both eyes.... several times a day, for periods of 10 seconds to half an hour.. but i haven't had one of these tia's since my last bypass...
anyway i hope some of this helps.. it is rare but so far it does also seem quite common for the ICA bypasses to improve the bloodflow enough that more surgery is not required....

emily