Embolic Stroke Syndrome Underlies Encephalopathy and Coma Following Cardiac Surgery
Abstract
In the April 2001 issue of the ARCHIVES, Wityk et al1 reported that most patients with clinical neurological deficits, and particularly encephalopathy, who were referred for brain imaging after cardiopulmonary bypass procedures sustained acute multifocal embolic cerebral infarction, evidenced on diffusion-weighted and perfusion-weighted brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. The importance of this finding is strengthened by examining the parallels to findings from earlier MRI...