Neurologic Complications of Cardiac Surgery

The surgical treatment of acquired and congenital cardiac lesions has undergone great development in the past decade. The steadily increasing number of operations performed upon the heart and adjacent great vessels has given rise to occasional complications involving the nervous system. Some of these complications have already been called to the attention of the neurologist. Thus, the problems of cerebral embolization from cardiac surgery¹and the resulting pathologic changes²have been discussed. Neurologic complications following mitral commissurotomy,³aortic surgery,⁴and open heart surgery⁵,⁶,also have been reported. The purpose of this paper is to describe the incidence and nature of the neurologic complications associated with all types of cardiac surgery. To accomplish this, detailed neurologic examinations were performed on all patients who underwent operations on the heart and adjacent great vessels at the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, during 1958. Methods and Materials Preoperative neurologic