Unilateral Tongue Atrophy and Fasciculations in Medullary Hemorrhage

Neeraj Kumar, Ravindra K Garg, Sudhakar Pandey, Arun K Singh, Hardeep S Malhotra, Imran Rizvi, Ravi Uniyal 
 Department of Neurology, King George's Medical University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Correspondence Address:
Dr. Ravindra K Garg
Department of Neurology, King George's Medical University, Lucknow - 226 003, Uttar Pradesh
India

Full Text



A 55-year-old hypertensive man presented with complaints of difficulty in walking and slurring of speech. Two years back, he had an episode of acute headache followed by altered sensorium; he became conscious after 15 days but with residual gait ataxia. On examination, the patient had cerebellar ataxia and right-sided hemiatrophy of the tongue with fasciculations [Video 1]. An old computed tomography and a recent magnetic resonance imaging revealed a right medial medullary hemorrhage and late post-hemorrhagic changes, respectively [Figure 1]. Possibly, a delayed degeneration of hypoglossal nucleus produced tongue hemiatrophy and fasciculations. This patient represents an unusual cause, as the most common etiology for unilateral/isolated tongue atrophy is a neoplasm.[1],[2]{Figure 1}[MULTIMEDIA:1]

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Conflicts of interest

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