Smart phone diagnosis

[Jim Manderin]

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http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/0...hone-helped-doctors-treat-woman-more-quickly/

Has anyone else had a similar experience in stroke/TIA patients? I believe this will become more and more common as our aging population becomes more tech savvy. I've had a patient take a picture of his "weird pupils" that ended up having a Horner's secondary to a carotid dissection, which was quite helpful as the anisocoria was not as pronounced when I saw him.

 

[neurodoc]

I did look at the video in the link. Yes, she does appear to have left facial weakness (that's definite from the video) and her speech is slurred
and she indicates that her left arm is weak. The video documentation of the left facial weakness is very useful,
diagnostically. It shows that something "real" was going on. It also seems that the symptoms were transient, lasting less than 24 hours, so there
was something that caused the hemifacial weakness. The question, "what was it." It fits the timeframe of a TIA but perhaps not a RIND, and
certainly not a Stroke. I can't tell if the facial weakness is UMN or LMN, but given the ipsilateral arm weakness, I would suspect UMN.

Needs further work-up, but in any case can't be reasonably attributed to a "stress reaction." Was there a history of HA? Maybe this was a migraine.

Great topic!

 

[AlternateSome1]

We get videos frequently for patients with epilepsy or psychogenic non-epileptic attacks. They are often helpful in clinching a diagnosis.