Central nervous system complications of open heart surgery.

Stroke and encephalopathy remain major causes of morbidity and occasional mortality complicating open heart surgery. Open heart surgery poses many hemodynamic, embolic, and metabolic threats to the brain, yet the cause of neurological damage often remains uncertain in the individual patient. Failure to recognize the multitude of potential causes for severe or subtle brain dysfunction after open heart surgery can lead to overemphasis of a few highly visible factors such as extracranial vascular disease.