Epidemiological survey of Moyamoya disease in Korea

To both clarify the current clinico-epidemiological features of Moyamoya disease in Korea as well as compare these cases with Japanese patients, 451 cases were collected from 26 Korean major neurosurgical institutes and 296 definite cases were analyzed statistically. Although the Korean age distribution patterns of Moyamoya disease showed two peaks, similar to Japanese patients, the Korean pattern was shifted to the right thus indicating Korean adult population to be 20% higher than that of Japanese patients. The female/male ratio was 1:3, which was slightly less than that for Japanese. The family occurrence rate in Koreans was 1.8%. The incidence of cerebral infarction and bleeding in Koreans was higher while transient ischemic attack (TIA) and seizure were less than that of Japanese. The incidence of infarction in children and of hemorrhage in children and adults were also statistically higher in Koreans. The incidence of hemorrhage was higher in females than in males. Both the age at onset and sex affected the disease type. Single encephalo-duro-arterio-synangiosis (EDAS) was performed on 87.6% of all surgical cases. Although the incidence of bleeding was higher in Korea, the outcomes of the patients were similar to that of the Japanese patients. Although Korean Moyamoya disease showed a relatively higher incidence of hemorrhage and adult onset, the overall clinical background was similar to that of Japanese patients.