Secuelas neurológicas tras electrocución. Presentación de un caso y revisión de la bibliografía

Abstract

Electrocution is the cause of a large number of accidents and, of these, a considerable percentage result in death. Several factors affect the severity and distribution of the injuries. It is known that for low voltages the characteristics of alternating current make it three times more dangerous than continuous current. The high percentage of neurological sequelae can be accounted for by the fact that nerves are the tissue with the lowest resistance in the body and electricity tends to follow the path that offers the least resistance.A 16-year-old male who was accidentally electrocuted by an electric guitar and later suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest; the patient required intubation. After withdrawing sedation, the patient was found to be blind in both eyes and could not remember what had happened. FLAIR MR imaging revealed oedema in both occipital lobes and, to a lesser extent, in the junction between the parietooccipital and temporooccipital lobes. Treatment with steroids was established for three days. After approximately one month, the patient had recovered his sight and the brain injuries had disappeared.The neurological manifestations secondary to accidents caused by electricity are usually divided into two types -immediate and delayed. Blindness has rarely been reported as a sequela in those who have survived fulguration due to a lightning strike. The patient's recovery after administering treatment with steroids and the reversibility of the oedema could lead us to think that the mechanism producing this sequela was the damage to the nervous system caused directly by the electricity, which is known as the 'phenomenon of electroporation'.