Patient’s neck self-massage leads to watershed stroke: case report
German doctors were on hand as telemetry revealed how the massage triggered the asystole that led to the stroke
Doctors are warning about the dangers of neck self-massage, after a patient admitted for a brain stem infarct gave himself a second stroke after attempting to relieve his neck pain.
Left: Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) on day of admission. Right: DWI after neck massage and asystole.
The massage stimulated the carotoid sinus, triggering a four-second asystole and leading to cerebral hypoperfusion and a