Alterations of the Whole Cerebral Blood Flow in Patients With Different Total Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Burden

BACKGROUND: Cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is a common age-related vascular disease of the brain associated with slowly accumulating tissue damage. At present, total CSVD burden score is a commonly used method to evaluate the severity of the disease. PURPOSE: To observe whether global and regional cerebral perfusion is related to total CSVD score and to explore global and regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes in patients with different degrees of CSVD. METHODS: We collected 130 subjects with different total burden score of CSVD (0 point: 33 subjects, 1 point: 39 subjects, 2 points: 24 subjects, 3 points: 24 subjects, 4 points: 10 subjects). Total CSVD burden score was evaluated by clinically routine sequences (T2WI, T2-FLAIR, T1WI, DWI, and SWAN sequence). Global and regional CBF were calculated and correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship between total CSVD score and CBF of the whole brain and several brain regions. RESULTS: The analysis results showed that there was a negative correlation between total CSVD burden score and global CBF (r = −0.33, p = 0.001). Total CSVD burden score also had moderately negative correlations with CBF of almost all the brain regions. CONCLUSION: CSVD is a disease that affects the whole brain. With the increase of total CSVD burden score, the global and regional CBF decreased. The CSVD total burden score could be used to evaluate the overall condition of brain perfusion.