Embolic Pontine Infarction in a Nonhypertensive Patient Following Coronary Angioplasty

A 63‐year‐old woman was found to have decreased vibration, light touch, and proprioception sensations in the right hemibody, following cardiac angioplasty. The patient was not hypertensive although she had a h1story of hypercholesterolemia and was a smoker. Magnetic resonance images of the brain demonstrated abnormal signal intensity in the left paramedian basis pons anterior to the fourth ventricle. The lesion was believed to be consistent with a lacunar infarction. Unlike this woman, the majority of patients who have a small‐vessel stroke are usually diabetic or hypertensive. The interesting features here were that the stroke was a complication of coronary angioplasty, was cardioembolic to the pons, and was falsely localized to the thalamus. In addition, rarely does an embolic stroke involve a single brainstem tract