Bilateral occipital lobe infarction with altitudinal field loss following radio frequency cardiac catheter ablation
Bilateral occipital lobe infarction with altitudinal field loss following radio frequency cardiac catheter ablation
Date
2010
Authors
Luu, Susie T
Lee, Andrew
Chen, Celia Shin Wen
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Abstract
Background :
Bilateral stroke following radiofrequency catheter ablation is an unusual complication and may result in bilateral altitudinal visual field defects. Bilateral altitudinal visual field defects usually result from prechiasmal pathology causing damage to both retinas or optic nerves and rarely from bilateral symmetric damage to the post chiasmal visual pathways.
Case presentation :
A 48-year-old man complained of visual disturbance on wakening following radiofrequency catheter ablation. The patient had a CHADS score of 1 pre-operatively and no complications were noted intra-operatively. Examination revealed a bilateral superior altitudinal defect and MRI of the brain showed multifocal areas of infarction predominantly involving the occipital lobes which correlated to with the visual deficits.
Conclusion :
While the risk of thromboembolism and perioperative stroke during radiofrequency catheter ablation is small, it is not insignificant.
Description
© 2010 Luu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Citation
Luu, S.T., Lee, A. and Chen, C.S.W. (2010). Bilateral occipital lobe infarction with altitudinal field loss following radio frequency cardiac catheter ablation. BMC Cardiovascular Disorders, 10 pp. 14-16.