A 22 year old woman developed the abrupt onset of difficulty seeing to the left. She had a known history of atrial fibrillation.

MRI - diffusion weighted images - Note the high signal in the distribution of the right posterior cerebral artery. This syndrome is most often caused by a cardiac embolus or an embolus from a occluded or stenotic proximal vertebral or basilar artery.

Revised 04/23/06.
The Electronic Curriculum is copyrighted 1998,  Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.