Brain SPECT in a case of cortical blindness.

Abstract

Published reports on patients with cortical blindness describe bilateral brain hemispheric lesions visualized in radiological and functional imaging studies. We present a case with a unilateral lesion on radiological studies and bilateral abnormalities on single-photon emission-computed tomographic (SPECT) scanning. SPECT images correlated much more closely than radiological studies with the patient's clinical status. We suggest that SPECT scanning can be a useful indicator of focal brain dysfunction in brain injury in spite of normal radiological studies. We also hypothesize that our patient's clinical and functional imaging findings could be attributed in part to the process of diaschisis.