Sadly confused

Assessing confused patients.

The approach to a patient who is confused demands the same principles of assessment that would be applied to other situations in neurology or medicine. The doctor requires knowledge, skill, and most of all experience, but can improve the chances of a correct diagnosis and appropriate management by careful history taking, examination, and observation. This is one area in which expensive investig...

Is Neurolaw Conceptually Confused?

In Minds, Brains, and Law, Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson argue that current attempts to use neuroscience to inform the theory and practice of law founder because they are built on confused conceptual foundations. Proponents of neurolaw attribute to the brain or to its parts psychological properties that belong only to people; this mistake vitiates many of the claims they make. Once neurola...

Confused by arteritis.

A 66-year-old woman presented in June, 1998 with a 3week history of intermittent confusion, unsteadiness, slurred speech, and fuzzy vision. She had had mild gait unsteadiness for over 1 year and for 6 months had complained of malaise and a poor appetite with 10 kg weight loss. She had had headaches for 3 weeks before admission, which she believed was a mild form of her longstanding migraine. Ex...

Dazed and confused.

An acutely confused young woman.

In September, 2009, a 20-year-old previously healthy woman presented to our emergency department with altered mental status, right arm tingling and numbness, and a bilateral pulsating frontotemporal headache. Her symptoms had started several hours earlier with transient loss of consciousness. On examination, she was alert, with reduced concentration, incoherent thoughts, and poor recall for rec...