Bilateral ataxia after tumor resection in a patient with a unilateral thalamic tumor

ABSTRACT

Patients with thalamic lesions can experience ataxia on the contralesional side. We report here a 24 year old female patient who presented with a left thalamic tumor and experienced bilateral ataxia of the upper and lower extremities after a left thalamic resection. Her right-sided ataxia was more severe than that of the left side. The bilateral ataxia was likely to be from cerebellar ataxia. The right-sided ataxia may have been caused by injury of the dentatorubrothalamic tract originating from the dentate nucleus of the right cerebellum and terminating in the contralateral ventrolateral nucleus of the left thalamus. We believe that the left sided ataxia in this patient was due to an uncrossed dentatorubrothalamic tract, which control the movement of the ipsilateral side of the human body.