Transcranial Doppler and Transcranial Color Duplex in Defining Collateral Cerebral Blood Flow

In an acute stroke setting, transcranial Doppler (TCD) and transcranial color-coded duplex (TCCD) have an important diagnostic utility in the monitoring of an arterial occlusion and microemboli detection. In addition, TCD has proven to be a very useful tool in the detection and progression of cerebral vasospasm in patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage. TCD/TCCD may have an important role in defining collateral blood flow (CF) in stroke patients. It is a noninvasive technique and can be utilized repeatedly allowing for changes in the blood flow dynamics as treatment is delivered. In this review, we outlined the evolving role of TCD/TCCD in defining CF in patients with an acute ischemic stroke, predicting clinical outcome and monitoring the treatment's efficacy of the CF augmentation.