ABSTRACT
Readers might ask why include the eye in a monograph about brain embolism. Many
reasons come to mind. The eye is really an outpouching from the brain, and the optic
nerve is really a brain tract. The eye is fed, like the brain, by the carotid arteries. The
eye is delivered and uses more blood than is accounted for by its size and many emboli
headed cranially wind up in the arteries that supply the eye. The human brain is dominated
by visual functions-looking, seeing, and revisualizing things, scenes, and people in our
mind’s eye. The visual loss related to eye ischemia is quite different than that related to
brain ischemia. The two syndromes are different, and it is important that they are separ-
ated. Clinicians should become aware of the signs and symptoms related to embolism
to the eye.
