Cortical Blindness After Cerebral Angiography

ABSTRACT

Cortical blindness means visual loss caused by bilateral destruction of visual cortex. Cortical blindness can develop after cerebral angiography due to hypertonic contrast medium which open the blood-brain barrier and then alternate the function of visual cortex transiently. About 30 minutes after injection of contrast medium (Ultravist 370(R)) during cerebral angiography, the patient complained of decrease of visual acuity. And 3 hours later, evaluation revealed that she could not see even the light. But her vision began to improve after 19 hours and recovered completely after 7 days. MRI taken at 12 hours after cerebral angiography showed high signal intensities in the both occipital lobes. But in repeated MRI study, which was taken after 3 days, previously noted high densities were completely disappeared. So we diagnosed this case as cortical blindness caused by hypertonic contrast medium.