Pathological eye movements in central nervous system disorders

-cerebellar vascular disease-

Abstract

Observation and follow-up study of abnormal eye movements were carried out in seven cases of acute unilateral cerebellar vascular disease. All of them were males who had survived the vascular attacks and were diagnosed as having cerebellar infarction by computerized axial tomography and vertebral angiography except for one case of cerebellar bleeding. Either gaze or spontaneous nystagmus was observed in all seven cases within 20 days of the onset, and positional nystagmus appeared in four of them.
Ocular dysmetria, disturbance of smooth pursuit eye movements and suppression of optokinetic nystagmus were frequently observed.
Pathological nystagmus towards the intact side and over-shooting eye movements to the diseased side in asymmetrical ocular dysmetria may be useful diagnostic features.
Recovery from disturbed optokinetic nystagmus was corfirmed by observations of increasing maximal eye velocity and the frequency of optokinetic nystagmus in two cases during a long course of about 200 days