Cerebral blood flow and oxygen consumption in man.

HE BLOOD FLOW AND OXYGEN METABOLISM of the human brain has been studied intensively since Kety developed the inert gas method in 1945. More than 200 clinical studies employing this method have been published so far, and now the former terra incognita is well mapped out. The information gained from all these studies will form the subject of the present review. It will also include, however, the results obtained by an indicator injection technique which has been applied to the measurement of cerebral blood flow in man to a much more limited extent. The early results obtained in this particular field have been reviewed by Schmidt (292) and Kety (156-163) and by other authors (38, 61, 76, 2 I 6, 281, 307). The aim of the present review is to offer an up to date presentation of the subject, and, in particular, to discuss certain aspects in greater detail. The general field of cerebral circulation was reviewed by Wolff in 1936 (348), by many authors in a comprehensive study in 1938 (41), and extensive bibliographic compilations of original contributions from 1938 to 1952 have also been published (255, 256). The pharmacology of the cerebral circulation alone, which has recently been reviewed by Sokoloff (318), forms an overwhelming body of knowledge. In the present study great emphasis will be put on information regarding cerebral oxygen consumption in man, whereas only scant attention will be paid to the intermediary metabolism of the brain. Himwich in I 951 published an excellent review (142) of much of the pertinent literature in this rapidly expanding field. Reference is also made to the recent study by Sokoloff (3 I 9). The first attempt to measure the cerebral blood flow in man was made in 1941 by observing the displacement of spinal fluid caused by compression of the