Superficial bedside brain biopsy can be a safe and practical approach to confirm a rare form of prion disease in cerebellar ataxia: A case study

Abstract

A 59-year-old hypertensive female developed ataxia and gait disturbances over three months. On admission, she had saccadic dysarthria, hypermetria with dyschronometria, intention tremor, and asynergia.

Her gait was unstable, wide based, with titubations and occasional falls.

Keywords

• Brain biopsy
• Cerebellar ataxia
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
• Brownell-Oppenheimer syndrome