Delayed recovery from ataxic dementia following liposuction

ABSTRACT

A 19-year-old student developed hypoventilation and cyanosis at the end of a cosmetic liposuction procedure. She was awake, but severely abulic, disoriented, and unable to stand and walk due to severe locomotor ataxia. Neuropsychological evaluation showed psychomotor slowness, and deficits in memory encoding and retrieval, and on executive, and visuospatial and visuoperceptual tests; oral comprehension and constructional praxis were spared. ¹H-MRS showed a reduction of NAA. A year later, her cognitive and neurological exam, and NAA returned to normal, and she resumed her normal life. The severity of the acute manifestations of hypoxic encephalopathy not always entail a poor prognosis.

KEYWORDS:

• Anoxic encephalopathy
• anoxic ataxia
• liposuction
• locomotor ataxia
• reversible dementia

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Mr. Jorge Baçal (in memoriam) and José Ricardo Pinheiro (Oswaldo Cruz Institute Library, Rio de Janeiro) for their kind support in the retrieval of classical texts, and to Professor Omar da Rosa Santos (Gaffrée e Guinle University Hospital) for indefatigable institutional support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2024.2346982

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.