Objective To identify the correlation factors associated with cerebral intragenic ischemia after temporary parent arterial occlusion in intracranial aneurysm surgery. Methods One hundred and eighteen patients who underwent temporary arterial occlusion in the 120 aneurysms (from a group of 324 consecutive aneurysm patients treated from 1996 to 2002) were reviewed retrospectively. These variables included sex, age, presence of preoperative subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), neurological clinical grade, operational timing, duration of arterial occlusion, numbers of temporary occlusion, mode of arterial occlusion, intraoperative aneurysm rupture, hypertension, the location of temporary occlusion, aneurysm size, hyperglycemia, atheromatous mass. Univariate and multivariate were used to investigate the relationship between the variates and postoperative ischemic changes. Results The total times of temporary occlusion were 156, with an average of 1.30. The duration of arterial occlusion ranged from 1 to 45 min (9.75?7.75). Seventeen patients (14.4%) demonstrated evidence of new infarction in the vascular territory subjected to temporary arterial occlusion. Conclusion In the univariate analysis, age, presence of preoperative SAH, duration of arterial occlusion, atheromatous mass are all significantly correlated with postoperative ischemic injuries. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that the age, older more than 60 (P= 0.010 3 , relative risk=4.335), and the duration of arterial occlusion, lasting more than 20 min (P= 0.032 9 , relative risk=4.177), have significant correlation with the injuries. Based on these findings, temporary occlusion is safe and useful in aneurysm surgery and the postoperative cerebral ischemia is less likely to occur when the duration of clipping is shorter than 20 min.