[Cerebral infarct and pure sensory deficit]

Twenty cases of pure sensory deficit of vascular origin are reported in patients aged 36 to 79 years. This type of attack in usually presumed to be due to a thalamic lacuna in the ventro-postero-lateral nucleus. However, other reported cases have shown other causal mechanisms and lesional sites. In the present series, CT scan and MRI in 11 cases demonstrated: infarctions in 9 and hemorrhages in 2 patients. The ventro-postero-lateral nucleus was involved in only 4 cases. An infarct of the posterior limb of the internal capsule (anterior choroidal artery territory) was present in 4 cases. The lesions in the other patients were: a thalamic hemorrhage and a small pontine hemorrhage lesion. The likely cause was embolism of cardiac origin in 4 cases, hypertension in 11 cases and diabetes in 4. One patient had an aneurysm of the posterior cerebral artery.