Left occipital lobectomy and the preangular anatomy of reading

Two patients had alexias after left occipital lobectomies. Case 1 was a 55-year-old man with a glioblastoma. At 4 months after surgery he could read slowly, but reading was neither efficient nor pleasant. Case 2 was a 19-year-old male who had a more restricted, medial occipital lobectomy for an encapsulated mesenchymal chondrosarcoma. The tumor did not invade brain initially, and the patient recovered efficient reading after 15 months. It is postulated that Case 2 was able to recover efficient reading because he still had a field of left ventrolateral occipitotemporal cortex connected to homologous cortex on the right.