An elderly woman presents with a “Transient Ischemic Attack”: A curable cause

Abstract

We report a 78-year-old female who presented to the Emergency department after a 10-minute episode of transient ischemic attack (TIA)-like symptoms of right side sensorimotor deficit, presumably due to a left carotid artery ischemia syndrome, only to be found surprisingly to have bilateral multifocal acute infarcts of cardioembolic pattern by brain magnetic resonance imaging, and, even more surprisingly, to have a rare, but curable embolic source from a large left atrial myxoma. This case report emphasizes the importance of following existing guidelines to timely and thoroughly investigate the potential management-changing causes for all TIA patients. Rare but curable causes of stroke or TIA in young adults such as cardiac myxoma can also occur in the elderly patient population.