Stroke as a complication of cardiac catheterization: Risk factors and clinical features

The authors aimed to delineate the risk factors and radiologic pattern of s troke complicating cardiac catheterization. Twenty-two cases were matched w ith three control subjects. Stroke was significantly associated with severi ty of coronary artery disease and length of fluoroscopy time (OR 1.96 and 1 .65). The use of MRI with diffusion weighting allowed the identification of multiple asymptomatic lesions and a subset of lacunar-type infarcts (23%), which most likely occurred on an atheroembolic basis.