Cerebrovascular Disease and Infections Flashcards
What deficits are seen in an anterior cerebral artery rupture?
- Upper motor neuron type weakness
- Cortical type sensory loss
- Contralateral hemiplegia initially
- Alien hand syndrome
What is alien hand syndrome? When is it seen?
- Semi Automatic movements of the contralateral arm not under voluntary control
- Seen in anterior cerebral artery rupture
What deficits are seen in posterior cerebral artery rupture?
- Contralateral homnymous hemianopia
What deficits are seen in middle cerebral artery rupture?
- Aphasia
- Hemineglect
- Hemianopia
- Face-arm or face-arm-leg sensorimotor loss
What is the gaze preference in MCA rupture?
- TOWARD side of lesion
What are lacunes?
- Small deep infarcts involving penetrating branches of MCA or other vessels
What is the difference between hypoxia and ischemia?
- Hypoxia –> decreased oxygen
- Ischemia –> decreased blood supply
What is the ultimate consequence of hypoxia and ischemia?
- Tissue infarction
What are the three major categories of cerebrovascular disease?
- Thrombosis
- Embolism
- Hemorrhage
What is a stroke?
- Clinical designation
- Applies to all classifications of cerebrovascular disease
- Acute onset and persists longer than 24 hours
What are some of the most common cerebrovascular disorders?
- Global ischemia
- Embolism
- Hypertensive intraparenchymal hemorrhage
- Ruptured aneurysm
What does survival depend on when blood flow is reduced?
- Collateral circulation
- Duration of ischemia
- Magnitude and rapidity of flow reduction
What are the two types of reduction in blood flow?
- Global ischemia
2. Focal ischemia
What are some causes of global ischemia?
- Cardiac arrest
- Shock
- Severe hypotension
What are some causes of focal ischemia?
- Embolic or thrombotic arterial occlusions
- Vasculitides
- Atherosclerosis in hypertension
What does the damage look like to watershed areas in an infarct?
- Sickle shaped band of necrosis
What can cause damage to the ACA-MCA watershed area?
- Occlusion of internal carotid artery
- Hypotension in patient with carotid stenosis
What symptoms are seen in ACA-MCA watershed infarct?
- Proximal arm and leg weakness
- Transcortical aphasia –> language issues
What symptoms are seen in MCA-PCA watershed infarct?
- Higher order visual processing
What can cause carotid stenosis?
- Atherosclerosis
What could be a consequence of atherosclerosis of the internal carotid artery?
- Thrombi can embolize distally to the MCA, ACA, or ophthalmic artery
What may be some symptoms of a thrombi that embolizes from the carotids?
- Contralateral face-arm or face-arm-leg weakness
- Contralateral sensory changes
- Contralateral visual field defects
- Aphasia or neglect
What are some sites of primary thrombosis?
- Carotid bifurcation
- Origin of middle cerebral artery (MCA)
- Either end of basilar artery
What is an atheroma?
- Intimal lesion, lipid core covered by fibrous cap
What happens if the lipid cap ruptures?
- Exposes blood to thrombogenic substance –> thrombosis/clot
What do infarcts look like in the brain?
- Wedge shaped due to distribution
What are some sources of emboli?
- A fib
- MI
- Valvular disease
- Artery-to-Artery emboli
- Dissection
- PFO
What is a marantic emboli?
- Proteinaceous emboli from marantic (non-bacterial thrombotic) endocarditis
- Hypercoagulable states such as advanced malignancy
- Amniotic fluid emboli –> child birth
Which artery is most likely affected by an emobli?
- MCA
What is a shower emboli?
- Fat after long bone fracture
What is characteristic of bone marrow embolization?
- Widespread white matter hemorrhages
What are some causes of hypercoaguability?
- Heritable coagulation factor disorders
- Dehydration
- Adenocarcinomas/malignancies
- Surgeries, trauma, childbirth
- DIC
- Hematologic disorders
- Vasculitis
What are some common causes of a transient ischemic attack (TIA)?
- Migraines
- Seizures
- Non-neurologic conditions (cardiac arrhythmias or hypoglycemia)
How long are TIAs typically? What happens if they are longer?
- Around 10 min
- Anything longer causes some permanent cell death
Why are TIAs so important to recognize?
- They are a neurological emergency
- May have a stroke causing persistent deficits within 3 months
What is the mechanism of TIAs?
- Embolus temporarily occludes then dissolves, in situ thrombus formation and/or vasospasm
What are the two types of stroke?
- Hemorrhagic
- Ischemic
What does a hemorrhagic stroke look like?
- Intracerebral or subarachnoid hemorrhage
- Emboli associated
- Hemorrhage secondary to reperfusion of damaged vessels
What does an ischemic stroke look like?
- Bloodless
- Thrombus associated
- Hemorrhagic conversion
What is hemorrhagic conversion seen in ischemic stroke?
- Fragile vessels rupture leading to secondary hemorrhage
What are some causes of ischemic stroke?
- Embolic
- Thrombotic
- Large vessel
- Small vessel
- Lacunar infarcts
What symptoms are seen in lenticulostriate artery infarct?
- Pure motor hemiparesis
What symptoms are seen in thalamic lacune?
- Contralateral somatosensory deficits
What symptoms are seen in basal ganglia lacune?
- Hemiballismus
What are slit hemorrhages?
- Small caliber penetrating vessels –> look like slit like cavities
What surrounds a slit hemorrhage?
- Pigment laden macrophages
- Macrophages
- Gliosis
What causes hypertensive encephalopathy?
- Malignant HTN
What is seen in hypertensive encephalopathy?
- Vascular multi-infarct dementia
- Binswanger disease
- Charcot-Bouchard microaneurysms
What signs are seen in vascular multi infarct demetia?
- Dementia
- Gait
- Pseudobulbar signs
What signs are seen in binswanger disease?
- Large area of subcortical white matter with myelin and axon loss
What signs are seen in charcot-bouchard microaneurysms?
- Associated with chronic hypertension
- Minute aneurysms in the basal ganglia
What is cerebral amyloid angiopathy?
- Lobar hemorrhage
- Same B-amyloid deposited in the walls of vessels (like in Alz disease) producing microbleeds
What is CADASIL?
- Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy
What is seen in CADASIL?
- Recurrent strokes and dementia
- Thickening of the media and adventitia
- Loss of smooth muscle cells and basophilic PAS+ deposits
When is CADASIL detected?
- Around 35 years old and infarcts typically occur 10-15 years later
What gene is seen in CADASIL?
- Auto Dom –> NOTCH 3 gene
What are some stroke risk factors?
- HTN
- Diabetes
- Hypercholesterolemia
- Cigarette smoking
- Pos family history
- Cardiac disease
- Prior history of stroke
- Hypercoagulability
What should you think if there is a stroke in a young patient?
- Arterial dissection (like in marfan)
- PFO or hypercoagulability
- Sickle cell
What is the most frequent cause of a significant subarachnoid hemorrhage?
- Rupture of saccular (berry) aneurysm –> begins as basilar SAH
What aneurysms are seen in the anterior circulation?
- Saccular
- Mycotic
- Traumatic
- Dissection
Where in the circle of willis are saccular aneurysms found?
- Majority in ACA
- Secondary location in MCA
How can saccular (berry) aneurysms be treated?
- Clipping due to having a neck
When do aneurysms usually rupture?
- Fifth decade and slightly more in females
What increases the likelihood of ruptured aneurysms?
- Increased intracranial pressure –> straining at stool or sexual orgasm
What are some hereditary diseases that have increased incidence of aneurysms?
- If first degree relative is affected
- Infantile polycystic kidney disease
- Ehlers-Danlos type IV
- NF1
- Marfan
How do people present with a ruptured aneurysms?
- Worse headache they have ever had
- Repeat bleeding is common
What are people most at risk for a couple of days after SAH?
- Additional ischemic injury from vasospasm affecting vessels bathed in extravasated blood
What are the four groups of vascular formations?
- Arteriovenous malformations (AVM)
- Cavernous malformations/hemangiomas
- Capillary telangiectasias
- Venous angiomas
What do cavernous malformations look like?
- Distended, loosely organized vascular channels arranged back to back
- ** THERE IS NO BRAIN PARENCHYMA***
What regions of the brain are affected by cavernous malformations?
- Cerebellum
- Pons
- Subcortical regions
What is seen in cavernous malformations?
- Foci of old hemorrhage
- Infarction
- Calcification seen in surrounding area
Who is most likely affect by AVMs?
- Males more than females in their 10-30s
What are some symptoms of AVMs?
- Seizure
- Intracerebral hemorrhage or SAH
What do AVMs look like?
- Tangle, worm like vascular channels with prominent pulsatile arteriovenous shunting with high blood flow
Where are AVMs most commonly seen?
- MCA and posterior branches (subarachnoid space)