[Cerebral ischemia or post traumatic thrombosis of the A. carotis occuring to a car driver (author's transl)].

A short while after leaving a public-house a 71 year old man as the driver of his car was involved in a head-on collision with another car. On admission to a hospital he was unconscious with a distinct debility for the left side of his body and showed a changing anisocoria. Angiography of the right carotid artery revealed an occlusion. It was suspected that this was the terminal state of a generalized arteriosclerotic occlusion which was considered being the reason for the accident. The autopsy-findings showed, however, a posttraumatic thrombosis (whiplash-trauma of the cervical vertebral column) of the right arteria carotis and of the right arteria vertebralis with thromboembolia in a small pontine artery with an infarct-like ischemic softening. The differentiation from an apoplexia is of importance for the differential diagnosis.