The psychiatry of vertebro-basilar insufficiency with the report of a case

Abstract

Vertebro-basilar insufficiency produces a rich spectrum of psychological and neurological symptoms. Where psychological symptoms dominate the picture, the patient may be presented first to a psychiatrist. The phenomenology of vertebro-basilar insufficiency is discussed with special reference to hallucinatory syndromes, memory disturbance, affective disorders, akinetic mutism, 'unusual reports', cortical blindness, agitated delirium, the Capgras syndrome and normal pressure hydrocephalus. Finally, the case of a 61-year-old man illustrating a variety of the neurological and psychological features described in this paper is presented.