Confusion in Acute Occipital Infarcts: Why Blame Delirium?
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 31, 2026

Brain Infarct Segmentation and Registration on MRI or CT for Lesion-symptom Mapping
Published on: September 25, 2019
Chloe R Plater1, Amy Green2, Hakim Eluzai3
1Hospital-Based Medicine, University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, Bournemouth, GBR.
Abstract:
Acute occipital infarction is a diagnostic challenge due to overlapping symptoms with delirium, another common hospital presentation. We describe a 94-year-old patient presenting with acute confusion and visual changes on imaging. CT imaging shows bilateral occipital infarcts, resulting in a display of Anton syndrome and impacting the patient's cognition. She was treated for an acute infarct and managed appropriately under the stroke team with the relevant therapy teams. We explore the challenges in differentiating causes of delirium and offer a diagnostic aid to prompt swifter identification of occipital infarcts in the absence of obvious cause for delirium. This provides an opportunity to encourage efficient diagnosis of occipital infarcts and to improve awareness for identifying key features early.
Related Concept Videos
Dementia l: Introduction
Hepatic Encephalopathy
Transient Ischemic Attack l: Introduction
Hemorrhagic Stroke ll: Pathophysiology
Visual Agnosia
Hemorrhagic Stroke l: Introduction