A Case of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy-like Syndrome: Aetiology Revealed

ABSTRACT

In 2015, we published an enigmatic case in Neuro-Ophthalmology regarding an 18-year-old woman who underwent an initially uneventful ascending aortic aneurysm repair. After 48 h, she developed a progressive supranuclear palsy-like syndrome with no findings on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), MRI tractography, or functional MRI which correlated with this syndrome. After following our patient over the ensuing years, it became clear that the likely aetiology of these neurologic deficits was the profound deep hypothermia associated with her aortic aneurysm repair.

KEYWORDS:

• Progressive supranuclear palsy
• hypothermia
• aortic aneurysm

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by an unrestricted grant from the Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc. N.Y., N.Y.

Declaration of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Harper-Inglis Memorial for Eye Research, The Peierls Foundation, That Man May See, and Research to Prevent Blindness.