Long phone call linked to stroke-like attack

(Reuters Health) — Stay on the phone long enough and you may encounter problems worse than your phone bill: One French psychiatrist experienced temporary, stroke-like symptoms after completing an hour-long phone call, where he cradled the phone between his head and shoulder.

Doctors place much of the blame for the patient’s symptoms on an unusually long bony protrusion on the man’s skull, just behind the ear. The patient, a 43-year-old psychiatrist, was holding the telephone between his left ear and shoulder in order to keep his hands free. After ending the hour-plus call, the otherwise healthy man suddenly experienced a temporary blindness in his left eye, a ringing in his left ear, and difficulties in speaking. Pressing the phone to his ear with his shoulder meant that the bony spike pressed on a major artery, interfering with blood supply to parts of his head.

“This case shows us that everyday activities with a prolonged distortion of the neck… can have unpredictable consequences for some people,” explained Dr. Mathieu Zuber, a neurologist at Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, France. He and his colleagues published the case report in the November issue of the journal Neurology.

Upon being admitted to hospital, computed tomography (CT) scanning revealed damage to the inner lining of the left carotid artery, a major vessel supplying blood to the brain. This damage was the probable cause of a temporary, stroke-like condition that led to the man’s symptoms.
Source: Yahoo News