Transient cortical blindness following vertebral angiography in a young adult with cerebellar haemangioblastoma

Abstract

Transient cortical blindness is reported to occur in 0.3% to 1% of cerebral angiography procedures. It develops within minutes of contrast medium injection and lasts for up to several days. We report a long episode of transient cortical blindness in a 17-year-old boy with cerebellar haemangioblastoma, which started during the preoperative vertebral angiography and lasted for 5 days. CT performed 2 days after the sudden onset of bilateral visual loss showed multiple asymmetrical lesions within the brain parenchyma in the distribution of the posterior cerebral circulation. Even though the patient's vision was completely restored 5 days after angiography, repeat MRI performed 2 months after angiography showed improvement but with residual lesions in the thalami, cerebellum and occipital lobe.

Transient Cortical Blindness Following Vertebral Angiography: A Case Report

“…The incidence was reported to be 0.3-1% of cerebral angiography [1]. With newer contrast agents, the incidence of 0.2% was reported recently [2]. Its pathophysiology remains uncertain.…”

Virtual simulation as a learning method in interventional radiology

“…The fact that gaining experience through making own mistakes is a very important and inseparable part of training makes it easy to see that it is necessary to introduce a different approach in training young interventional radiologists [4,9,[11][12][13]. Therefore, an interventional radiologist has less opportunity to work with real patients.…”

“…In addition, it is difficult to reproduce a pathological condition, that being a limiting factor for a great number of situations young radiologists can find themselves in and so miss the opportunity to learn some skills from them [11]. These models have the authentic human anatomy, and they do the following under fluoroscopic guidance: they use special blood circulation pumps, mimic blood flow and allow contrast agent application.…”

“…In addition, animals are expensive to take care of and they raise many other ethical issues, especially in the western countries [11,14]. In addition, animals are expensive to take care of and they raise many other ethical issues, especially in the western countries [11,14].…”

“…The trainee has the possibility to adjust the fluoroscopic picture, which means that there is a possibility for zooming, collimation, rotation. All complicated parts of procedure could be repeated many times, which minimizes the possibility of making real mistakes [11]. A 3D screen with display allows the users to see blood vessels in different positions and with different angulations in all three projections, and thus enables them to understand better geometric relations during catheter and wire movement within blood vessels [17] (Figure 3).…”