CURRENT CONCEPTS: Vertebrobasilar Disease

Embolic infarcts can involve one posterior cerebral artery, which most often leads to a hemianopia of the contralateral visual field,1,3,20,23 as in the patient described in Figure 2. The patient described in Figure 2 had occlusion of a vertebral artery causing transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) related to the lower brain stem and followed by an intraarterial embolus to the right posterior cerebral artery, causing an occipital-lobe infarct and a left hemianopia.