ALS Appearance After Narcosis
We examined three patient cases. Two of them one 52 and the other 58 years old appeared to have developed bulbar ALS after a cardiac bypass operation. Both the patients, before the intervention had been submitted to a total neurological examination, with no existence of a positive element. Also, previous reports of the patients had not reported any neurological irregularity. Both the patients had hypertension and vigorous clinical events of myocardic ischemia and were submitted to surgical operation (bypass).
After this operation, the function of the heart was restored and the blood pressure regulated.
The third week after the surgical operation to the heart, the first patient developed clinical symptoms of ALS.
In the other patient the ALS symptoms appeared during the first hours after surgery. Similar symptoms were observed in a patient 62 years old after a prolonged narcosis in a laparotomy.
Conclusion: It seems that patient unconsciousness and general suppression of brain functions, activates an x factor that constitutes the activation of a a neurormonical mechanism, possibly immunological, which results in neurological manifestation of ALS.
Abstract published in the abstract book of the 9th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ALS/MND.
Paper presented at the 9th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ALS/MND , Munich, Germany, November 16-18 1998.