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Prompt recognition of direct and indirect neurologic complications of systemic cancers and their evolving treatments is essential. Neurologists should be familiar with common and rare neurologic toxicities of conventional chemotherapy, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and CAR T-cell therapy.
In this episode, Teshamae Monteith, MD, FAAN, speaks with Amy A. Pruitt, MD, FAAN, author of the article "Neurologic Complications of Cancer and Its Treatment" in the Continuum® February 2026 Neurology of Systemic Disease issue.
Dr. Monteith is the associate editor of Continuum® Audio and an associate professor of clinical neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, Florida.
Dr. Pruitt is the William N. Kelley Professor of Neurology, Vice Chair for Education, and Division Chief in the Department of General Neurology for the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Additional Resources
Read the article: Neurologic Complications of Cancer and Its Treatment
Subscribe to Continuum®: shop.lww.com/Continuum
Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME
Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud
More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com
Social Media
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@ContinuumAAN
Host: @headacheMD
Full episode transcript available here
Dr Monteith: As neurologists, we have a critical role in diagnosing neurologic complications of cancer from metastatic disease, seizures to neuropathies. Increasingly, the rapid development of novel treatments themselves, like immunotherapies, Car-T cells, and targeted drugs are causing new neurologic side effects, which we need to recognize, manage and anticipate as therapeutic developments evolve.
Dr Jones: This is Dr Jones, editor in chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast.
Dr Monteith: Hi, this is Dr Teshamae Monteith. Today I'm interviewing Dr Amy Pruitt about her article on neurologic complications of cancer and its treatment, which appears in the February 2026 issue on neurology of systemic disease. Welcome to our podcast. How are you?
Dr Pruitt: Thanks for having me.
Dr Monteith: Absolutely. Why don't you introduce yourself?
Dr Pruitt: As you said, my name is Dr Amy Pruitt. I'm a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, where I am also the clerkship director and have been for a long time. I'm the division chief of general neurology and the vice chair for education in my department.
Dr Monteith: You have a lot of hats.
Dr Pruitt: I do.
Dr Monteith: Okay. So, before we dive into all this great work that you did in the article, why don't you just let us know just a little bit about what led you to this career path?
Dr Pruitt: Sure. So, I've always been interested in the intersection between internal medicine and neurology; in fact had I've not been a neurologist. I probably would have been either an oncologist or infectious disease specialist. And that leads to doing neuro oncology and seeing a fair amount of CNS infections. I see both inpatients and outpatients and really enjoy my neuro hospitalist time because, honestly, as all of you who do consults on inpatient services know, there is an incredibly changing landscape of consequences of cancer therapies. And if you haven't been on service for a while, you probably don't even know the name, is much less the adverse effects of these medicines.
Dr Monteith: Okay, so you were just like me to write this article.
Dr Pruitt: Well, I think where it is directed, I think, as I said, that people who are seeing a lot of inpatients and who may not know it's a new consequences of cytotoxic or immunotherapies or T cell therapies and the different appearances and really prognoses, which have changed dramatically in the last few years in the field of systemic cancer.
Dr Monteith: Any other essential points of your article?
Dr Pruitt: So, I think there are certain areas where neurologists are going to intersect with oncologic patients even before oncologists do so, what tumors might present synchronously in the brain and the rest of the body. And those would include things like small cell and non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma, to a lesser extent, women who are surviving much longer now with good therapies for various versions of breast cancers, have one of the solid tumors most likely to present at first relapse in the brain, either in the brain metastases category or in the leptomeninges. So, these are the areas where I think it most likely that our neurologists are going to intersect with oncology. And then there is the burgeoning, thankfully, realm of long-term survivors who have had cancer therapies in young adult lives, sometimes in childhood. And we need to be abreast of the ever-changing spectrum of complications that will plague these people all their lives. And we can do a great deal to improve the quality of survival in these patients.
Dr Monteith: And of course, there has been a lot of great development in cancer research, which has led to novel therapeutics. So, can you tell us about a few of these therapeutics and their complications that neurologists need to know about?
Dr Pruitt: Sure. Well, as I said, some of the cancers you're most likely to encounter are lung cancer and melanoma. And here the prognosis has changed dramatically. A few years ago, someone with metastatic melanoma might have had a couple months prognosis. And now we're talking honestly about long term survivors, complete responses in lung cancer and melanoma, and really good responses in the breast cancer realm as well. So, these are dramatic changes. And these are ways neurologists need to know what the actual nuanced and much more variable prognosis is among patients with brain metastases. In order to give the patients good advice and also to give the radiation oncologist and the oncologist, the medical oncologist, good advice. So, for example, just in the realm of brain metastases, a stage change has been that people with asymptomatic metastases for, let's say, non-small cell lung cancer or melanoma might have systemic therapy rather than local therapy, local therapy being gamma knife radiation or less likely, whole brain radiation therapy, but really systemic therapy with responses and the brands that are nearly as good as those in the rest of the body. And sustained, durable responses. The article goes into great detail about what's available in the way of therapies for these cancers, like breast, HER2-positive breast cancer, like EGFR‑positive lung cancer and melanoma of various types. It's really quite amazing actually, to have anybody quote a seven-year survival of little over 40% in people who presented with non-symptomatic melanoma metastases. Unheard of, really. So, I think if you're still practicing, quote unquote old school neuro-oncology, you need to get up to date because you're giving patients and their caregivers good advice that will lead them to the very important therapies. You mentioned some of the immunotherapies. If we have time, I'm happy to go into those because those are really important for neurologic consultants in the hospital.
Dr Monteith: Yeah. Let's talk about immune checkpoint inhibitors. What do we need to know about them and their complications?
Dr Pruitt: So, they have a novel set of central nervous system and peripheral nervous system complications. These include both acute and subacute presentations. They can arise after the very first dose and usually do so within the first several doses. Importantly, even though the patient may be quite sick, about three quarters will recover entirely. However, the most common ones are actually the peripheral nervous system, and they have the highest morbidity and mortality rate. So, a very unfortunate combination of myasthenia, myocarditis and skeletal myositis has a high mortality rate and is very hard to treat in a group of people who have received these immune checkpoint inhibitors in the central nervous system, there can be cerebellitis, encephalitis. These again can be acute or subacute presentations. And the big discussion with the attending oncologist is, can we continue these therapies after we've withdrawn them, and for instance, treated them with steroids? Because you can imagine that if you knock down the immune system with steroids, you might make the patient temporarily better. But in so doing, you're negating the important consequences of the mechanisms of immune checkpoint inhibitors.
So, I would say probably in a given week on the inpatient service, I'll see five or so. So nearly a daily event when I see some major complication of immune checkpoint inhibitors. And again, I've already mentioned the histology in which those have been useful, but they're not indicated for a variety of other malignancies as well. And the Car-T cell therapies are a whole different set of side effects. And some of your listeners may know about cytokine release syndrome, which is nearly universal right after the infusion of the car T cells. But a few days later is where we come into action with the immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome. Or ICANS can say that I'll refer to it as ICANS since then. These include focal neurologic symptoms and the form of what's often a conduction sort of aphasia, a predictable deterioration, and handwriting along with confusion. As far as the radiology of that syndrome, that's really pretty odd. It can range from a dramatic cerebellitis, just a dramatic basal ganglia syndrome, a dramatic and enhancing leptomeningeal syndrome to an absolutely normal MRI scan. And the important thing for our consultant consultants to remember is that the patient can look really, really ill, and you can turn to the team and say, you know what, there's a very good chance that it's going to get all better. So, supporting people through what are very good diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms that exist in the literature and are quoted in the Continuum chapter to help know when you should be giving steroids, when you should be giving tocilizumab, etc. these are tried and true therapies now, and the Car-T world has improved not only the prognosis of patients. And I remember seeing some of the very first Car-T patients, and we really didn't know what to do to help them, how to turn off the cascade of this immunologic reaction. Now we know how to do that. And it's important to stay up to date on those algorithms because you can make a big difference for these patients.
Dr Monteith: Yeah. So, this is great. We're going to dive back into the diagnostics, which is really related to my follow up question. I think you gave a really great pearl. And it's always can we keep going? Do we stop? So, I want to like dive into that question. And I assume that there are categories. Yes. You can, somewhere in between, and absolutely not. And so, tell me a little bit more about that thinking.
Dr Pruitt: Well that's a very nuanced question. And so, the answer that some oncologists will give you as well, they've had such a dramatic response. So maybe we don't need it anymore. It's never the neurologist's decision. It's always the joint decision with the oncologist. So, for instance, with a Merkel cell cancer patient develops a severe anti‑AChR syndrome on an immune checkpoint inhibitor. And we tell the oncologist maybe you shouldn't go back and do that again. And the person says, never mind, he'll be fine. He's already had the response that we want, but that's a difficult question to answer because, for instance, in a slightly different subset, let's look at multiple myeloma patients. And I spent a fair amount of time on multiple myeloma in the article because it affects the nervous system in so many ways. And we have so many different therapies for these patients, one of which is a Car T-cell. And this is a B-cell maturation antigen, Car-T. It's different from the ones that we know for lymphoma and leukemia. And it has a different set of neurologic problems, which unfortunately do preclude going back to taking a Car-T cell therapy again. And just to make a long story short, this particular complication makes the patient look Parkinsonian.
The consult you're probably going to get from the medical services is patients weak. Well, the patient is not exactly weak. He is Parkinsonian. He has a extrapyramidal rigidity, sometimes a tremor a negative cat scan and a B-cell maturation antigen syndrome occurs not at the sort of 5 to 7 day mark about ICANS that we just discussed, but rather a month or so out and a month or so out. It's not when you're expecting to see Car-T cell therapies. So, patients end up getting worked up extensively for, let's say, some sort of infection, when in fact, what we should be looking at is a newly described complication of Car-T cell therapy. So, the part of my article on multiple myeloma is one that's really important because as you know, it's such a common hematologic problem among older people. And many of these people may have direct complications of multiple myeloma, such as direct tumor infiltration of nerves. POEMS syndrome. So, it's really a wealth of neurological issues for us to contend with for these people.
Dr Monteith: Yeah. And I know you've really done a great job of adding lots of wonderful charts, including understanding the time course of some of these complications, when to anticipate, because I think some of it is about when to anticipate some of these complications.
Dr Pruitt: Well, exactly. Yes. Given the time constraints, I've made a lot of tables because there was a lot of information. And those, I think, are the kinds of things that a consultant should know: what should I be thinking about at this point in time? And that sort of leads us to what are the later complications of these things. And those include many medical things, from failure due to neoplasia, morbidity, radiation, chemotherapy agents, the long-term and medium-term consequences of these things for people. Are going to come back to our office as well. Immunocompromised patients, such as the ones and heavily treated patients that I just mentioned, may lack a robust inflammatory response. And they can have infections really at any time out. Some are predictable, as in our leukemia patients who have had hematopoietic cell transplant. So, we kind of know when to expect viral infections, nosocomial infections, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, many other things down the road. But in this era of COVID, we know that these patients are more susceptible to the dire effects of COVID, and they may not mount a good vaccination response. We have seen types of neurologic complications of all sorts of infections, including babesiosis this year, and persistent enteric viral meningitis. So, the patient can present a very atypical fashion. And the neurologic consultant has to keep a really open mind about the broad differential of what might be happening.
Dr Monteith: And you do have a section under imaging and metastatic disease. Are there any like new sequences or a way to kind of tease out complexities?
Dr Pruitt: So, there is marked variability in the radiographic appearance of brain metastases. And I must confess that I made a very large collage of all the different representative types of things. And I think that's important for neurologic consultants to recognize that some metastases don't enhance. They don't all look like ring-enhancing lesions. Some can be much more diffuse, particularly if the patient has received something like a VEGF inhibitor like bevacizumab therapy can look exceedingly different. They can involve the dura, which should be treated differently. There can be simultaneous leptomeningeal and disease. So as far as I know, sequences perhaps not so much. Although if one is thinking about the differential between radiation-related injury and someone who's already been treated versus tumor recurrence, then we have some pretty good microscopic data, some susceptibility weighted images, other ways of getting whether this is really radiation related change or tumor recurrence, a major problem obviously.
What we also know about radiation is kind of a theme of the article is use it as infrequently as possible, because we just talked about some of the other therapies that we have. We may need to give local therapy for symptomatic patients, but we give as little as possible, and we try never to give whole brain radiation therapy. I'll go on record as saying that it's certainly necessary. Sometimes people have diffuse lymphoma, this disease that's recurred, they have multiple metastases in a sort of miliary fashion may be necessary, but if you can use gamma knife radiation, if you cause any use form of focal radiation, new in the leptomeningeal world is proton therapy for spinal metastases. So quick sparing techniques. And this is something that should always be considered when you're consulting on someone in a place in which you have the option of proton therapy. So, I would say that distinguishing between radiation necrosis and recurrent tumor and the use of protons are the big news in the radiation therapy world. And don't give whole brain radiation therapy if you can avoid it.
Dr Monteith: Yeah. I'm getting a flashback from residency because, you know, that always happens. And the radiologist saying, you know, we need more information when you put in those orders. And so, I think with this whole era of new chemotherapeutic agents and how they could present on imaging and give the radiologists as much information, including the type of chemotherapeutic agent used.
Dr Pruitt: Yeah, I think particularly in the transplant world. So, the leukemia lymphoma patients who have received one of the calcineurin inhibitors, like tacrolimus or cyclosporine, that induces a whole set of complications, some of which are visible radiographically. There's a delayed leukoencephalopathy. There can be stroke. There can be SMART syndrome, stroke like migraine after radiation therapy. And perhaps many of our listeners have been confronted with someone who has a prolonged focal deficit, say, a hemianopia and maybe a hemisensory deficit with or without a subsequent headache. It goes on for days to hours. It looks peculiar on the MRI scan because it's not then a vascular distribution. There's sort of diffuse gyral swelling, flattening of the EEG on that side, the patients getting steroids and valproate and anticoagulation and angiography and all. It doesn't need any of that. The syndrome of stroke, like migraine after radiation therapy, needs to be recognized. And best thing to do is don't just do something. Stand there. You should wait until it goes away. And so, I think that's we are seeing this increasingly, that we first reported this in young adults who had been treated years ago for medulloblastoma. So, it was posterior fossa tumors primarily. But this has now been broadened, as you know, to include supratentorial tumors of many types and adults at various times out from their radiation therapy from a few months to many years.
Dr Monteith: I should ask you in writing this article, clearly you have a wealth of knowledge, but in kind of just putting this together, what surprised you?
Dr Pruitt: I think what surprised me is the increasing range of complications and that virtually anything needs to be thought of central nervous system or peripheral nervous system. With some of these newer therapies. There is a chart in there about the conventional cytotoxic therapies, and we're all familiar with things like methotrexate and that sort of thing. But what surprised me really is the increasing diversity of complications of these newer drugs, and also the fact that I didn't know some of the third and fourth generations of the tyrosine kinase inhibitors too. When you look at even the year of 2020, neurologic drugs were second only to oncologic drugs and FDA approval even at the height of COVID. So, don't feel badly if you don't remember any of the drugs really changing so rapidly. And they're better ideas, they're going to be fancier Car-T cells that attempt to get around some of the adverse effects of these and neurologists will retain really important role in following some of these patients, to be sure that these improvements are actually real and durable.
Dr Monteith: Excellent. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation.
Dr Pruitt: Well, thank you so much for having me. And I hope people do get information from the article. Thanks.
Dr Monteith: Again, today I've been interviewing Dr Amy Pruitt about her article on neurologic complications of cancer and its treatment, which appears in the February 2026 Continuum issue on neurology of systemic disease. Be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this and other issues. And thank you to our listeners for joining today.
Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, associate editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use the link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe, AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.

Nearly one in five patients in intensive care units (ICUs) requires neurologic consultation. The neurologic complications of critical illness can be unique to its underlying processes and can persist as independent disease states even after resolution of the inciting critical illness.
In this episode, Casey Albin, MD, speaks with Shivani Ghoshal, MD, author of the article "Neurologic Complications of Critical Illness" in the Continuum® February 2026 Neurology of Systemic Disease issue.
Dr. Albin is a Continuum® Audio interviewer, associate editor of media engagement, and an assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Ghoshal is an assistant professor of neurology for the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, New York.
Additional Resources
Read the article: Neurologic Complications of Critical Illness
Subscribe to Continuum®: shop.lww.com/Continuum
Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME
Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud
More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com
Social Media
facebook.com/continuumcme
@ContinuumAAN
Host: @caseyalbin
Guest: @ghoshal_shivani
Full episode transcript available here
Dr Albin: The ICU can be such an intimidating place. There's unresponsive patients, there's beeping equipment and a seemingly endless way in which the nervous system can be compromised. But fortunately, today I have the opportunity to speak with Dr Shivani Ghoshal about her paper, Neurologic Complications of Critical Illness, which is going to help us demystify the approach to these patients and provide some clinical pearls that you can take to your next consult in the ICU.
Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast.
Dr Albin: Hello, this is Dr Kasey Albin. Today I'm interviewing Dr Shivani Ghoshal about her article on neurologic complications of critical illness, which appears in the February 2026 Continuum issue on neurology of systemic disease. Welcome to the podcast, Dr Ghoshal. It's really such a treat for me to get to interview you, someone who I know and have worked with in the past. But for those who do not know you, please give us a little background about what brought you to this topic and what you do in your clinical life.
Dr Ghoshal: Thank you so much. It's a thrill to be interviewed by someone that I know well and get to work with. Outside of writing this article for Continuum, I am a neurointensivist. I'm an assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University and the program director for the Neurocritical Care Fellowship between Columbia Cornell and New York Presbyterian. So, a lot of what I do in my day-to-day is thinking about acute brain injury along with the neurology of systemic disease and how, really, the two interplay with each other, of how neurologic complications can arise from systemic illness and the other way around.
Dr Albin: Yeah, you are the absolute perfect person to kind of walk us through the complexity of the brain and body connection.
Dr Ghoshal: I don't know if I can deal with that kind of praise, but thank you.
Dr Albin: And you've really written a powerhouse article on just the myriad of complications that really arise in the ICU, and you've broken it down into what I think is a very thoughtful way of sort of bucketing these complications. So, tell us a little bit about the approach you took here.
Dr Ghoshal: I love this article because neurologic complications are just so common in so many types of acute critical illness. And I think we have to think for each organ system, how does this affect the brain, and then how does the brain then interplay, let's say, in kidney failure, in hepatic failure, in sepsis, right? Which is so common that I think we don't even think a lot about, like, what are types of septic encephalopathy for all the antibiotics we give; like, what are the implications of this? I really enjoy taking each system and thinking about, how does it specifically affect neurologic complications?
Dr Albin: Yeah. And then there was a really nice breakdown in terms of some of the procedures that will happen within the ICU in general. You know, the things that are happening to the patients at the bedside also put them at risk for neurologic complications. Then there are those neurologic changes that are happening because of some of the underlying problem that brought those patients to the ICU. And then the unfortunate number of problems that arise because the patient has been in the ICU for such a long period of time.
Dr Ghoshal: You know- and I think that that first part you mentioned, just about procedures in the neuro-ICU, right? Or in the ICU in general. I think that we don't think about that on a day-to-day level, right? Just like arterial lines are one of the most associated with any kind of peripheral nerve injury, especially axillary arterial lines. I learned quite a bit, even going through this article and then looking at other sources. So, thank you also for pointing that part out.
Dr Albin: Yeah. When I was thinking about how do we distill all of what was covered through this article, I actually really thought it would be sort of most interesting to have you model sort of your approach to these patient complications and how you approach the complexity of an ICU patient. And so, if it's okay with you, we'll just walk through a couple cases.
Dr Ghoshal: Oh my gosh, let's do it.
Dr Albin: All right. So, these are all, of course, composite cases. You know, there is no patient violation here. Let's say that this is a 64-year-old patient and they're admitted with influenza, and they develop ARDS. And they're in the MICU. And this patient, they were pretty sick on arrival and they were intubated for three days. But now the patient's been extubated, and the MICU team calls you because today she's having trouble swallowing and her voice, you know, the family says that this is not what she normally sounds like. And the team is really quite worried that she's had a stroke. And so they are calling for a neurology consult because they want to know what they should do. So, walk us through your approach to that patient.
Dr Ghoshal: Well, I think the primary team being concerned for a stroke is definitely reasonable, but I think, taking a bigger step back, what I would first want to think about, is this neurologic or non-neurologic? Neurology, you know, there's a parcel of things we can go through, but even just a non-neurologic, like, is this just primary injury to the vocal cords, right? I think about the cough were there, the ET tube, it wasn't overinflated which caused direct damage, right? And then after that, then I would think a little bit more about my approach for what is going on neurologically. Thinking about either, is this a brain process or is this a- more of like a spinal cord cervical cord injury process or more cranial nerve issue?
Dr Albin: Yeah. How would you approach the exam in that patient?
Dr Ghoshal: Yeah. You know, I- and just to, again, take a step back, right? To remember that when we do intubate someone, the physical maneuvers that we have are a chin lift and regular endoscopy, right? They have, like, significant movement for the cervical spine. So, I might want to know even before I examine the patient, right, or their history, right, do they have anything like, do they have known cervical stenosis? Do they have any, like, cervical spine pathology? Was it a difficult intubation? Right? So, these are the kind of the things I'd want to know even from the history, along with whatever vascular risk factors they may have. And then, to your question about the actual exam. Yes, you know, I may look for, like, crossed findings, right? If we're thinking about, let's say, a medullary lesion, etc. I think all listening to this podcast know about MRI testing there. But beyond what I would be looking for, let's say, in a medullary stroke, I'd also want to be looking at just, like, water paresis, right? I might want to be interested in, let's say, signs of neurogenic shock. You know, you mentioned they're in septic shock, ARDS. I might want to actually take a look to see, like, was this all septic, right? Or what are their other shock types present.
Dr Albin: So, what I hear you're saying is you're evaluating A, first of all, answering the consulting question, you know, is there a real risk for some sort of cerebrovascular phenomenon, but then actually going to the bedside to examine the patient, to say, does that make sense? Do we see hemibody involvement here? And it's a good thing that you're approaching it that way. Because actually, when you go to the bedside, she does have some difficulty speaking. And reading the notes, this was actually quite a difficult intubation. From just the cranial nerve, you know, where she has maybe some dysphonia and dysphagia. But you also, on exam, then find that she's got some pretty symmetric distal weakness in her arms bilaterally. And so, when you find that, what are some of the imaging that you're going to think through to try to pin down exactly what's going on here?
Dr Ghoshal: I love these cases because it's not so straightforward. Now, let's say if she has, like, an upper extremity weakness and lower cranial nerve deficits, you know, things I'd be looking for, like any injury to, like, hypoglossal nerve, vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is going to be hard to tell, right? Recurrent laryngeal nerve, you know, the lingual nerve. I might be thinking more about stretch injury, which we think of as tapia syndrome, right? So, just a textbook answer. The hypoglossal recurrent laryngeal nerve injury. And what we're going to be looking for is dysphonia, dysphagia, and unilateral tongue paralysis. Could be a bilateral as well. But I guess, then, the next question after I'm going through my physical exam findings is thinking about my imaging choice.
Dr Albin: So, for this patient, given that she's got this bilateral upper extremity, maybe some tepia syndrome where there may have been some stretch injury to some of those hypoglossal nerves. She may have also just had some trauma to the vocal cords. Like, as you said, these procedures can really put patients at risk for just mechanical injury to some of those structures. But knowing that upper extremity weakness, what kind of imaging, then, do you look at for the court?
Dr Ghoshal: I think it's not unreasonable to do an MRI brain, right; with that, it then cuts through the brain stem. And then doing an MRI of the cervical spine. I guess the point that you mentioned at the very beginning, that this is three days after she was intubated… you do run the risk beyond 72 hours of, let's say, a primary injury. Let's say if she had, you know, God forbid, an injury to the cervical spine, those hyperintensities, especially when associated with ligamentous injury, they can pseudonormalize beyond that time. I would say yes, absolutely. MRI of the brain, cervical spine, then cuts through the brain stem. But I would worry that if too much time elapses, you may miss some of those injuries that you would otherwise find.
Dr Albin: Yeah. I think those are some really important take-home pearls, and when we're thinking about the cord injury that could occur through the intubation process, that we really do need to be aware of student normalization of the T2 hyperintensities after that 72 hours. And so, I think that's a really important pearl for us to take home. So, kind of summarizing this case here, there was probably a multitude of things going on, which highlights to me the complexity of ICU patients. Less likely in this case, and they did not find a stroke. But that is, of course, something that we must keep on the differential for any critical care, critically injured, critically ill patient. But tapia syndrome where you have some stretch injury to the hypoglossal nerve and the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which can put people at risk for dysphasia or dystonia after intubation. And then that hyperextension injury that can happen for patients who are intubated, because people, especially for difficult intubations, are really having to manipulate the neck. And for an elderly patient who may have some cervical stenosis, that hyperextension can actually result in a central cord syndrome, which is what they discovered with the C-spine MRI in this case. So, cognizant of all of the cervical injuries that might accompany the procedure of intubation.
Dr Ghoshal: And you know what I would say, right. Because I think that our population is overall aging. I think with that, we're going to end up with, like, more cervical spine pathology for these patients that are ongoing intubation, just as you, you know, very astutely pointed out. Right? Trying to have at least, like, manual inline stabilization, right, or even like, considering fiber optic intubation in some of these patients is probably going to be a safer way to go to avoid these kind of injuries.
Dr Albin: Yeah, I think that that's so true and really emphasizes the importance of communication between the neurology team and the critical care team.
Dr Ghoshal: Totally. 
Dr Albin: Neurology is probably not the person intubating the patient. Right? But it's really important for any of these consults to have a good appreciation and that robust communication with the critical care team about what has been going on systemically for this patient, even opening that intubation note and saying, was this an easy intubation? Was it a difficult intubation? I think sometimes we forget that key skill of just communicating across the teams to have a holistic picture of what's been happening in MICU.
Dr Ghoshal: Yeah, I totally agree. It's kind of why my first part of this case you mentioned is just like asking the team, like, what happened during the intubation, right?
Dr Albin: It's a really important takeaway. All right. We're going to shift gears from procedural complications, reminding our listeners there is a fantastic summary of all of the things that can happen to ICU patients, just because we're doing things to them, putting needles in places where needles aren't usually, such as for arterial lines, for central lines, intubating patients; all of these have complications that can affect neurologic function downstream. But let's shift gears and let's talk now about a 72-year-old man. And he's admitted to the ICU with pyelonephritis and bacteremia. He's got nephrolithiasis. And the team calls you because he, like many patients in the ICU, has some, quote, "shaking events." And he's altered, and they want to know what to do.
Dr Ghoshal: So, there's a lot to unpack there. Sepsis is so common, right? When you're saying this patient is altered, sepsis-associated encephalopathy occurs in 70% of patients. So, like, in sepsis or septic shock. And we know that, you know, they say it affects mortality, long-term cognitive outcomes. But because, I think, it's so common, we don't really take the time to think about what is going on in sepsis in the brain.
Dr Albin: The brain is an end organ perfusion. And the end organs are what we're sort of monitoring in sepsis, and the brain is such a key marker of that.
Dr Ghoshal: Absolutely. I think there are a lot of things that happen with sepsis in the brain. But if I were going to pick like 1 or 2 points that I really wanted to hone in on, it's thinking about that blood brain barrier disruption that happens in sepsis. And so, what that does when you disrupt the blood brain barrier is that you end up with this inflammatory milieu, for lack of a better term, that, like, comes into the brain. You have, like, a disordered sort of microglial activation, cytokine release. You know, all of these things are creating more oxidative stress, neuronal damage. And the other hand of this, right, along with that blood brain barrier disruption, is disordered cerebral auto regulation.
Dr Albin: And I think that those two things are probably underappreciated. The complications and why, maybe, they lead to this downstream difficulty in recovering and then probably are also setting the patient up to be at risk of downstream delirium that is so frequent in the ICU.
Dr Ghoshal: I couldn't agree more. And, you know, for this patient's case, right, where you're saying, like, they're altered, they're shaking, I bring up this idea of cerebral autoregulation. Right? Just because for normal patients---or normal people, rather, right?---normal cerebral autoregulation allows us to have, like, stable brain perfusion through whatever range of pressures we have. A lot of these patients are septic; whether they are hypertensive or not, they have significant changes in cerebral vasoconstriction, vasodilation, right? And this can create anything from, let's say, like, neuronal excitotoxicity, metabolic alterations. Right? Just in that setting of cerebral inflammation. So, these patients, yes, are at a very high risk of encephalopathy. And then from these changes, right, from blood brain barrier disruption, whether that's from a cerebral autoregulation or just from that inflammatory milieu, they're at a super high risk of stroke and seizure.
Dr Albin: Yeah. So, they… in calling you to the bedside, someone comes to meet you and they say, we sent a bunch of labs off and we just got one back, and it's his ammonia, and his ammonia is 92. So, do you think that's what's going on here? This is so common. Right? Hyperammonemia. Give us sort of your approach to kind of triaging, is the hyperammonemia really a problem or is it just some sort of bystander?
Dr Ghoshal: Oh, you know, ammonia is such a slippery lab, right? That… well, it's very hard not to have a strong opinion on it one way or the other. And so, I think what I would say is that ammonia can be elevated for, like, a parcel of reasons. Right? Like if someone has tonic colonic movements, you can have ammonia. That's just, like, part of like enteral metabolism, muscle breakdown, whatever it may be. And ammonia can go up for a lot of reasons. And it's true also that ammonia can contribute encephalopathy. And there are a few mechanisms that can go through in a little bit. I would first want to know… a part of understanding, I guess, any lab is understanding in this context of, like, what was the ammonia before? Right? What is their baseline ammonia? Is this a significant rise? Like, how much of a rise should you care about?
Dr Albin: Yeah, absolutely. So, you look back and they live sort of at the upper range of normal with 60 being their sort of baseline.
Dr Ghoshal: Yeah. You know, I don't know that I would be so concerned about this particular ammonia level. I may trend it. But, you know, just to talk a little bit about ammonia and why we care about encephalopathy, right? So, the reason why it's so concerning, I guess I should say, in any kind of acute illness is that ammonia will cross the blood brain barrier. And then it's converted into ammonium ions, and it will go into astrocytes and, like, they can increase interstellar osmolarity. Right? So, these cells swell. Right? And because water is drawn into the astrocytes, they cannot interfere with actual functioning of the astrocytes. Also worsen cerebral auto regulation and cause, I guess, sort of an excitotoxic environment. Right? So, ammonia can be concerning, I think when you send in a lab, right? I think it's important to remember that there's no direct relationship between ammonia level and encephalopathy severity.
Dr Albin: Right. I think that's a really key point to drive home that it's usually not until we're in the hyperammonemic ranges above the 120s-150s up into the high two, three, four hundreds that we really need to be concerned about that cerebral edema and potential, even herniation. But these low-level ammonias, just like you said, like we really need to understand the baseline, how much they've changed, the context of, you know, what the ammonia sent on ice? Was it laying out in the room for hours on end? That really contextualizes this lab that we otherwise have a very hard time interpreting.
Dr Ghoshal: You're absolutely right that an ammonia greater than 120, you know, from our guidelines, both in lymphatic disease along with kidney disease. So, let's say above 120, your patient may be more at risk for cerebral edema. I could also play the devil's advocate and just remind, you know, that because ammonia isn't converted into ammonium in the brain, a peripheral ammonia level really may not reflect central nervous system levels. Right? So, let's say your ammonia is a bit lower also. But let's say there's been a significant change in ammonia for the patient. That may cause some cerebral disturbance that, you know, let's say this ammonia is still below 120. I may still be worried about it just because of the trend. Right? And knowing that my serum level may not really reflect what's going on above.
Dr Albin: That's such a great point. So, lots of pearls around this lab, comes back abnormal all the time. In fact, I feel like it's more frequently abnormal than it is normal in our ICU patients. And so, I really wanted to give residents and listeners a way that we who work in the ICU contextualize that. So, in this case, you've been musing, hmm, this is probably not what's really going on here. He is still having these movements at the bedside. Let me ask you, when you hear shaking in the ICU, what's your big differential there?
Dr Ghoshal: I always want to know, is it something like a myoclonus? Right? Is it something like an actual coordinated movement? Is this also something like a chorea, right? There are so many movements. So, like, I think that Continuum actually in the past put out a great issue about, like, movement disorders in critical illness. But really what I want to know is, like, first of all, like, is this neurologic or not neurologic? Right? Is this a, you know, let's say a seizure? Is this something suppressible, nonsuppressible? I really want to know more about what that movement is before I could even create a differential.
Dr Albin: Totally. And so, when you're in the bedside, he's doing exactly that sort of classic myoclonus. He is having these short, jerky movements. They are not rhythmic. He is intermittently following some commands through this, but inattentive would be the best neurologic term for his mental status state. But then while you're there, he actually does have a GTC and you're in the room. It's generalized, it's convulsive, no longer responsive. His eyes are rolling up and you are well-convinced this truly is a seizure. As you start to approach, now, a seizure in the ICU, walk us through kind of some of the things that you think about in terms of labs you might want, what imaging you might want, what risk factors you're most concerned about.
Dr Ghoshal: It sounds like he's having two distinct types of movement, right? He's having some myoclonus, right, or multifocal myoclonus where he has an intact mental status, for better or worse, through it. On that sort of bucket, I'm thinking more of metabolic disturbances. So, I went through this whole thing about the ammonia. But I think what I'd really want to know is, like, what is happening with his uremia, right? What is happening to his kidney function? I think you mentioned you had nephrolithiasis on top of being, I think, critically ill. I think that's some of the things I'd be looking at. I also would like to know about his antibiotics, any medications he's taking. And then for the seizure, I may want to know some of the similar labs. Right? Even just whatever, like, what is his magnesium? What is his calcium? Like, simple things being simple. And then I can go down a little bit more of a list on what I would do for the actual seizure. Just knowing that sepsis, hepatic disease, renal disease, antibiotics themselves may all increase your risk of having a seizure.
Dr Albin: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what you said about sort of knowing the labs and knowing the medications plays such a crucial role in our workup for ICU changes in neurostatus. And so, in this case, because of that nephrolithiasis, you go scroll through his labs. And it looks like his creatinine has risen to 4 quite abruptly. So, he's got a pretty severe acute kidney injury. And his BUN has risen all the way to 80 over the course of three days. And then you're looking at the med list, and he is on a bunch of antibiotics, but one of them is cefepime. And so, walk us through, with just those couple of key words, what are some of the things that you are thinking about from the neurologic perspective?
Dr Ghoshal: I am, like, salivating. I love these cases. No, I'm serious, right? So, like, I'll take a few minutes at the beginning to talk about, like, uremia and uremic encephalopathy. You know, we see uremia often, and uremic encephalopathy, we think, maybe there's some part of cytotoxic edema, right? Because that urea accumulates in the brain; it accumulates similar to, like, almost ammonia, creates these toxic wanding compounds in the thalamus, like, in the cortex, wherever it may be. And that itself will cause, like, a, let's say, impaired cytokine clearance from the brain, neuronal apoptosis, also affects the blood brain barrier. So, all of these things itself, like, from urea, all right, like a worsening uremia, can cause a different sort of CNS changes that could affect both the seizure side along with the multifocal myoclonus.
Dr Albin: Yeah. Just putting him at risk of two very different types of neuropathology, right in the same case.
Dr Ghoshal: Totally. And you know what I'll say about like, uremia? I could talk about this for a very long time, but like, really what I want people to remember is that uremia really increases your risk of seizure. I talked a little bit about this accumulation of uremia, like a uremic exquisitely in the brain, but you have this metabolic acidosis that develops from urea and you increase the activation of your acid-sensing ion channels. Right? And these retaining creatine metabolite actually cause more inhibition of your GABA receptors and stimulation of your NMDA. Right? So, all of these things together, like I think uremia is so common that we don't really take the time to think about, like, all of these things that could be happening.
Dr Albin: Yeah. And then because of the poor kidney function, there's also accumulation of drugs. And there's this risk for toxic accumulation of some of the things that are sort of more renally metabolized.
Dr Ghoshal: Absolutely. And on top of that, if you include, you know, what we talked about before, let's say you have cortical edema or hypoperfusion or a disordered cerebral autoregulation just from sepsis itself. You know, all of these things do fit together, right? It's not just a one thing for every. I know that you mentioned also there, antibiotic. I loved writing the section on antibiotic-associated encephalopathy, in part because it's something we don't spend as much time thinking about. I will say just broadly, there are three subtypes of antibiotic-associated encephalopathy. The first one, I think, is the most common. That, like, I associate it with beta-lactam, cephalosporins, or penicillin. Right? And that is where we can often see, like, seizure and myoclonus, right? You're really between, like, in days from antibiotic use. We think some of that is just from competitive antagonism of GABA receptors. To quickly talk about, you know, we also have types that are associated with quinolones and macrolides. More of, like, an acute psychosis. And then absolutely metronidazole, which causes a subacute encephalopathy---takes a little bit longer, you know, and more associated with cerebellar dysfunction. But I think every time that I am looking at a patient like this, I am absolutely going through and looking at the antibiotics.
Dr Albin: I love that. And because it's not- cefepime is really the classic, and it's been the poster child for that type-one complication where you get mild blueness and seizure, usually within a day or two of starting the antibiotics---but it's all cephalosporins. It can be any beta-lactam. And so, cefepime is sort of our, like, poster child, but is not the only one. And so, with removing that antibiotic by getting him on a continual renal replacement therapy, this patient actually does quite well. And I think this is a take-home message for all of us, that helping the critical care team limit the risk to the patient from a medication perspective, us helping them say, you know, can we pull this off? Can we switch this to something that's going to be more neuro-friendly from their antibiotic perspective? really can make a huge amount of difference to that patient's long-term outcomes.
Dr Ghoshal: Totally.
Dr Albin: I think that you and I could talk about this all day long. I mean, this is just the, like, bread and butter of these complex patients that we see. But I think I'll summarize it for our listeners that really have to think about what procedures did the patient get, opening some of those notes to figure out where are their complications, and then taking a very holistic approach to the ICU patient and making sure that you're characterizing what kind of abnormal movements are they having? What are their labs? Being mindful about the context the lab was sent in and the patient's baseline, like we talked about with that hyperammonemia, really matters where the patient's been. And then that medication list is- can be culprit number one, two, and three for bad things that are happening to the patient. Again today. I've been interviewing Dr Shivani Ghoshal on her article on neurologic complications of critical illness, which appears in the February 2026 Continuum issue on neurology of systemic disease. Be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this and all other issues. And thank you so much to our listeners and to Dr Ghoshal for joining today. It was a pleasure.
Dr Ghoshal: Thank you for having me.
Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, associate editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use the link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.

Neurologic complications of hematologic disorders are frequently encountered in clinical practice and can involve both the central and peripheral nervous systems. Early recognition and appropriate management in collaboration with a hematologist are essential to reduce morbidity and mortality.
In this episode, Kait Nevel, MD, speaks with Lauren Patrick, MD, and Mark Terrelonge, MD, MPH, authors of the article "Neurologic Complications of Hematologic Disorders" in the Continuum® February 2026 Neurology of Systemic Disease issue.
Dr. Nevel is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and a neurologist and neuro-oncologist at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Dr. Patrick is an assistant professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, in San Francisco, California.
Dr. Terrelonge is an associate professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, in San Francisco, California.
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Host: @IUneurodocmom
Full episode transcript available here
Dr Nevel: Thick blood, thin blood. These are terms often used by patients and caregivers to describe some of the hematologic disorders that can lead to neurological diseases such as stroke. So, when should we consider a hematologic disorder as a potential cause for neurological conditions, such as stroke or neuropathy. Today I have the opportunity to interview Drs Lauren Patrick and Mark Terrelonge to learn more about neurologic complications of hematologic disorders in their recent article in Continuum.
Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, editor-in-chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast.
Dr Nevel: Hello, this is Dr Kate Nevel. Today I'm interviewing Drs Lauren Patrick and Mark Terrelonge about their article on neurologic complications of hematologic disorders. This article appears in the February 2026 Continuum issue on neurology of systemic disease. Welcome to the podcast, and please introduce yourself to the audience.
Dr Patrick: Thank you for having us. We're both thrilled to be here. I'm Lauren Patrick, a vascular neurologist and assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and program director for the Vascular Neurology Fellowship here.
Dr Terrelonge: And I'm Mark Terrelonge, I'm an associate professor of neurology and neuromuscular medicine here at UCSF and one of the associate program directors for the adult neurology residency. Nice to meet you.
Dr Nevel: Nice to meet you both. Really looking forward to getting into your article and learning more. So, to kind of kick us off, I always like to ask what do you think is the most important takeaway from your article for the practicing neurologist? And maybe since there are two of you and I suspect you covered slightly different aspects of this article, maybe you could give us two most important takeaways.
Dr Patrick: Sure. I think the biggest takeaway is to keep hematologic disorders on the differential when evaluating patients with neurologic symptoms. Conditions like sickle cell disease, myeloproliferative neoplasms, or plasma cell dyscrasias and paraproteinemia can cause strokes or peripheral neuropathies, and many have specific and targetable treatments. The early recognition and collaboration with our hematology colleagues can truly change patient outcomes, whether that's by initiating cytoreductive therapy, managing thrombocytopenia, or optimizing antithrombotic therapy.
Dr Nevel: Great. So, this is a really big and diverse topic. As always, I'm going to urge our listeners to read the article because there is a lot of really good stuff in your article that we just don't have time to get into during this interview today. But you cover a lot of different hematological disorders and how they can cause neurological complications. One of the major neurological complications of hematological disorders is cerebral vascular events. So, I'm hoping, Warren, that you can walk us through a little bit. When should we consider workup of potential hematologic disorder as a cause when we see a patient with ischemic stroke, because certainly not all patients with ischemic stroke should be getting a broad hematological disorder work up. So how can we kind of identify early on that there might be something else at play?
Dr Patrick: Absolutely, great question. So, in many cases, the underlying hematologic disorder is already known, such as sickle cell disease or polycythemia vera. But sometimes stroke is the initial presentation or manifestation of the disease. So red flags can include young age, recurrent cryptogenic strokes or thrombosis, and unusual locations like the cerebral venous system. Laboratory clues such as unexplained erythrocytosis, thrombocytosis, thrombocytopenia, or hemolytic anemia should raise suspicion for an occult hematologic disorder. In the setting of acute illness, immune-mediated or heparin-induced thrombocytopenia or thrombotic microangiopathies should be suspected in patients that have hemorrhagic and or thrombotic complications, particularly when relevant lab disturbances are present. Acquired thrombophilia such as anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome should be considered in young patients with autoimmune disease, prior venous or arterial thrombotic complications, or pregnancy morbidity. Now, these are rare causes overall, but they're important to catch because the management can differ dramatically from our typical stroke care.
Dr Nevel: Great. And what are some of the most common inherited or acquired thrombophilias and when should we be sending these labs?
Dr Patrick: The hematologic causes really account for small minority of arterial strokes approximately one to two percent, but among those, sickle cell disease, anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome and the myeloproliferative neoplasms are the most common. Timing of testing is key. So, the genetic thrombophilia panels can be drawn at presentation, but lab values such as protein C, protein S, and antithrombin levels may be falsely low during acute thrombosis, so they're often repeated weeks later. Similarly, for anti-phospholipid antibody testing that should be done at presentation and when positive, confirmed at twelve weeks, since transient positivity can occur with affections or acute events. So, in patients that are already anticoagulated for anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome, testing becomes particularly tricky, especially with lupus anticoagulant assays. Some results need to be interpreted carefully or repeated when feasible. The main message is to collaborate early with our hematology colleagues to guide the timing and interpretation of these studies.
Dr Nevel: Yeah, wonderful. Thank you. I'll ask some similar questions about neuropathy. So when should we consider an underlying hematologic disorder as being the cause for someone's neuropathy?
Dr Terrelonge: So, luckily for a neurologist, then serum protein electrophoresis or an SPEP is already a part of the first pass evaluation for even the most common neuropathies we see, technically already considered every time we do an evaluation. However, we do know that most neuropathies progress very slowly and don't really lead to significant limitations in patient activities of daily living. And for those, the initial workup step, you may not need to do any additional search for any hematologic diseases after that first step. Within patients who start to have more unusual features with their neuropathy, including a rapid progression, early proximal weakness, significant and extremely painful neuropathies, significant ataxia, or new tremor or anything that's kind of outside of the garden variety neuropathy, then you should start to think about a hematologic cause. Additionally, if a patient already has a known hematologic malignancy or process before their neuropathy, there should be some form of assessment to see through exam or electrodiagnostically if the two are correlated. I do have to add one caveat, though, and that's just because someone has a hematologic malignancy or a paraprotein seen in their blood, their neuropathy and the neurologic syndrome don't necessarily have to be causally related. So, we have to do some additional testing to determine if the patient's presentation of the paraprotein are actually linked.
Dr Nevel: Can you walk us through a little bit how we determine if they're associated or just coincidental?
Dr Terrelonge: Yeah. So, for some of the proteins, there's a specific phenotype that will come with the specific protein. For example, an anti MAG proteinopathies or MAG standing for a myelin associated glycoprotein, it usually leads to a distal sensor and motor polyneuropathy where the most distal portions of nerves are affected. So, in that case, people might notice that they have numbness and weakness in their toes and their fingers, and it doesn't follow that typical length dependent pattern. So, in that case, if you have the anti mag neuropathy and the electrodiagnostic signature of an anti mag neuropathy along with the symptoms, you're more likely to think that the two are related then if not.
Dr Nevel: Great. Thank you. And I was hoping you could speak a little bit more about amyloidosis just because I think that that's one that can be really tricky to diagnose. And I see patients, you know, have sometimes more drawn out evaluations or see multiple providers before a diagnosis is reached. So, can you speak a little bit more to how we diagnose amyloidosis in relationship to neuropathy or other neurological conditions and when we should push for more invasive testing like a nerve biopsy?
Dr Terrelonge: So, amyloidosis certainly is a tricky diagnosis. I've been tricked by it and I think most of my neuromuscular colleagues have probably been tricked by it at least once. It's a hard diagnosis to make is it usually requires a pretty high index of suspicion, and also requires a tissue diagnosis to cinch. There're some patients who will come in with a prior history of amyloidosis and they're a little bit easier to figure out if the neuropathy is related. Maybe it's started in their heart or their kidney first and then you can just see if the type of amyloid they have usually deposits in nerve, and that may be enough. But if there's any diagnostic uncertainty, you could go forward with tissue biopsy. But it's patients in which the neuropathy is the first symptom that amyloidosis can be especially tricky to diagnose. It's a primarily light chain disease. So, if you do only an SPEP as a part of your initial neuropathy evaluation, you could miss it. But usually, the patients will have either a severely painful neuropathy, early autonomic dysfunction, or really prominent bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome. So, if they have any of those, usually we'll add in an amyloid workup as a part of that of the rest of the workup, which would include both light chain evaluations to see if there's any increase in Lambda or Kappa light chains and then also biopsy. Biopsy can be of the skin or fat pad first, which have reasonable sensitivity for picking up disease, but they're not necessarily a hundred percent. So if the suspicion remains high in those cases, a nerve biopsy should be considered. And the reason why this is important is that the chemotherapeutic agents that we have now can actually help arrest a lot of these diseases and stop further organ involvement. So, if you think about it, it is important to keep pushing and looking until you find it.
Dr Nevel: Thank you so much for that. And a follow up question to that, once patients are started on appropriate therapy, the diagnosis is made, chemotherapy is started, what's the typical clinical course that you see in terms of their neuropathy? Do you ever see improvement or is it arrest of worsening?
Dr Terrelonge: Usually for amyloid, there is an arrest of disease, but in some patients, they could have some improvement, not necessarily a dramatic improvement, but some patients could see some reversal of symptoms. That may not necessarily be because nerves injured nerves are regrowing, but because of reorganization of nerves to muscle, they could have some strength increases or at least less pain.
Dr Nevel: Yeah, thank you. So, when should we involve a hematologist in aiding in the evaluation of patients we suspect may have an underlying hematological disorder? You guys really outlined very nicely in your article some of the laboratory workup or other workup like you just talked about with amyloidosis. But at what point in that workup should we reach out to our hematology colleagues?
Dr Patrick: I would say almost always. So, these disorders are inherently multi-system and benefit from early co-management. In acute sickle cell stroke, for example, hematology helps direct emergent exchange transfusion. For myeloproliferative disorders they guide cyto reduction and long term antithrombotic strategy. And for antibody mediated or plasma cell disorders, hematology determines disease specific therapies. So, neurology may help with identifying the presentation, but the definitive management is almost always shared with our hematology colleagues.
Dr Nevel: And as you both have mentioned that a lot of times in these cases, their hematologic disorder may be already known before they present with their neurological symptoms. So, I imagine obviously in those cases that a hematologist hopefully is already heavily involved in their care. What do you think is the most difficult aspect of identifying and diagnosing patients with neurologic illness as having an underlying hematological disorder?
Dr Patrick: The hardest part is maintaining a high index of suspicion, especially since hematologic causes account for a very small minority of arterial strokes. Most strokes are from traditional vascular risk factors like you mentioned, or cardio embolism, so it's easy to stop diagnostic evaluation after standard studies have been performed. An example of a challenging case is a patient that's young, they've had recurrent cryptogenic stroke, and they could have antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, but it can be easy to miss if their antibody titers are borderline or if they're already anticoagulated, which would complicate retesting. So, it's about balancing the urge to over-test with recognizing the few cases where identifying A hematologic cause truly changes that management.
Dr Terrelonge: And then on the neuropathy side, probably the hardest part is deciding what's causal and what's coincidence. Monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance, or MGUS, is really common in older adults, so not every M-spike on an SPEP explains a neuropathy. And even sometimes there's times when the neurologic picture will develop a little bit faster than the hematologic one. So, it's hard to put the two together.
Dr Nevel: Yeah. What's the most rewarding aspect of taking care of patients with complications from their hematologic disorders?
Dr Patrick: It's deeply rewarding when a targeted diagnosis leads to a tangible improvement in that patient's care. For example, identifying A cryptogenic stroke is being due to myeloproliferative neoplasm or an inherited thrombophilia allows us to move from empiric treatment to possible disease specific strategy. It's really gratifying to give patients that clarity, to give them a diagnosis and in some cases prevent future events.
Dr Terrelonge: Agreed. And even on the neuropathy side, almost all of the neuropathies that are hematologically related are treatable. So, it's so satisfying whenever you have a patient with say an anti-MAG neuropathy or Waldenström can start the patient on therapy, and you can see someone who's been having a progressive decline to stability and in those cases sometimes even significant recovery.
Dr Nevel: Yeah, absolutely. Very rewarding when you can identify the problem and make it better. That's what it's all about. So, what are the future areas of research in this area? What do we still need to learn?
Dr Patrick: There's still a lot to learn. I think we need better data on the safety of acute reperfusion therapy and antithrombotic agents, particularly in patients that are at dual risk for bleeding and thrombosis. Other examples, secondary prevention strategies and anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome. What's the best target INR? Do you add aspirin to warfarin or not? All of that is often left up to expert opinion. What's the best management for adults with sickle cell stroke? There are many open questions there. A lot of the protocols that we have in place for sickle cell patients that are adults as derived from pediatric literature and there's vast potential in terms of disease modifying therapies, especially in the fields of sickle cell disease and amyloidosis. And we'll need to reassess how those treatments may change neurologic outcomes.
Dr Terrelonge: I think on the neuropathy side that having some form of new biomarkers to help us clearly know of the neuropathy and that hematologic illness are associated would be very helpful. On the treatment side, a lot of this is really being driven by the hematology space, but new therapies that treat hematologic plasma cell disorders, including some of the new BTK inhibitor, may be incorporated relatively soon into the algorithm for how we treat many of our patients. I'm excited to see what's to come from this.
Dr Nevel: Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us today. I know I've certainly learned a lot by reading your article and through our discussion today. Highly encourage our listeners to read your wonderful article, which is a very thorough review of hematologic disorders and neurological complications. Again, today I've been interviewing Dr Lauren Patrick and Dr Mark Terrelonge on their article Neurologic Complications of Hematologic Disorders, which appears in the February 2026 Continuum issue on Neurology of Systemic Disease. Please be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this and other issues. And as always, thank you so much to our listeners for joining today, and thank you so much to Lauren and Mark.
Dr Terrelonge: Yeah, thank you so much for having us.
Dr Patrick: Thank you so much for having us and for highlighting this topic. We hope the issue encourages clinicians to think broadly about hematologic causes of neurologic disease and to continue collaborating closely with our hematology colleagues. It's a complex but very fascinating intersection for both of our fields.
Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, associate editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use this link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/AudioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.

Neurologic complications of endocrine disorders are diverse and may arise before systemic manifestations. Early recognition is essential because neurologic symptoms may represent the presentation of an undiagnosed underlying endocrine disorder, and because many neurologic complications of endocrine disorders are reversible with timely treatment.
In this episode, Gordon Smith, MD, FAAN, speaks with Rafid Mustafa, MD, author of the article "Neurologic Complications of Endocrine Disorders" in the Continuum® February 2026 Neurology of Systemic Disease issue.
Dr. Smith is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and a professor and chair of neurology at Kenneth and Dianne Wright Distinguished Chair in Clinical and Translational Research at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.
Dr. Mustafa is an assistant professor of neurology for the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Additional Resources
Read the article: Neurologic Complications of Endocrine Disorders
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Host: @gordonsmithMD
Guest: @RafidMustafa
Full episode transcript available here
Dr Smith: So what group of disorders causes cognitive changes, weakness, fatigue, neuropathy, and seizures? Kind of sounds like all of neurology in one, doesn't it? It turns out that disorders of the endocrine system can cause all of these neurological problems and others. And kind of reminds me of William Osler, who famously said at the end of the 19th century that "he or she who knows syphilis knows medicine." Syphilis was the great imitator of his time. I wonder if in our time, the great imitator is actually endocrine disorders because it can cause all of these different problems. Today I have the great opportunity to talk with Dr Rafid Mustafa from Mayo Clinic about the neurological complications of endocrine disorders, which is a really terrific article in the February 2026 issue of Continuum.
Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast.
Dr Smith: This is Dr Gordon Smith. Today I'm interviewing Dr Rafid Mustafa about his article on neurological complications of endocrine disorders, which appears in the February 2026 Continuum issue on neurology of systemic disease. Rafid, welcome to the podcast, and please introduce yourself to our listeners.
Dr Mustafa: Well, thank you for having me, Dr Smith. Like you had mentioned, I'm Dr Rafid Mustafa. I'm a neurohospitalist at the Mayo Clinic and I had the pleasure of writing this issue with Dr Aaron Berkowitz, and it's been such a fun ride to be a part of Continuum for this issue.
Dr Smith: Yeah, it's a really exciting issue. And I have to say, I was really excited to have the opportunity to talk to you. Even though my research is in diabetes and I'm looking forward to talking about that---not my research, but about diabetes---I think the area of endocrine and neurological complications of endocrine disorders is confusing to us. And I guess maybe you could begin by just this concept that most of us check a few endocrine labs on just about everything. But how do you bring order to this when there's a group of disorders that all cause just about every domain of neurological problem, be it weakness, neuropathy, cognitive changes, and so forth?
Dr Mustafa: Yeah, I think it's super interesting. I think that's why, you know, this issue on systemic diseases is fun. I had a mentor one time telling me that your interim year in residency is important so you can learn about all these organ systems that are there to keep the brain alive. And so, I think neurologic complications of systemic disease are fun. You know, like you said, the endocrine system, whenever it goes awry, you can get all sorts of neurologic complications. Putting order to it can be challenging. I think it's important to know what the different parts of the endocrine system do, the different glands and how they're connected, and what to look out for when you encounter neurologic problems, because sometimes those neurologic manifestations can be the very earliest sign of something wrong with different parts of the endocrine system.
Dr Smith: You knew exactly where I was heading without having to tip my cards. I mean, that's exactly where I wanted to begin, because I think of this as an intimidating topic, but in reading your article, you outlined kind of the glandular structure or anatomy of the endocrine system and sort of the logic of its function. And actually, it's not as complicated as I was thinking going in. You did a good job of framing. And I wonder if maybe you can begin by just reminding our listeners the basic anatomy and functional logic that they'll need to keep in mind.
Dr Mustafa: Yeah, absolutely. The system itself is this network of different glands and hormones that work to influence each other, just like our, you know, our nervous system is all interconnected as well, too. But this is more ensuring homeostasis in various ways. So, you have the hypothalamus all the way at top that secretes things, usually just to stimulate the pituitary, which often ends up being the controller of the endocrine system. And then there are these various other organs that have different jobs or things to do. So, there's, you know, the thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal glands; you have your pancreas, there's gonads. And all of these different things have different roles to keep us healthy and regulated. to function appropriately, you know, whether that's just generalized metabolic things from the thyroid gland or more flight or fight responses from the adrenal gland, even, you know, renin, aldosterone, etc, etc, from the adrenal. And then you know, the pancreas, diabetes, all sorts of things there. Gonads are important for sexual health. It's kind of cool how it's all regulated together and there's these feedback loops and- ah, we'll have fun talking about it.
Dr Smith: Just listening to you, it kind of feels almost like the endocrine system is part of the nervous system, isn't it? I mean- and there are these sort of relationships between the two that I know we'll get into. We think of insulin sensitivity, for instance, and, you know, patients with diabetes. I mean, there's neuronal insulin resistance as well. So, they're very, very interconnected systems.
Dr Mustafa: Absolutely. You're absolutely right.
Dr Smith: I wonder if you can talk about this idea of feedback loops. This is something that we all learned in medical school, but probably worth reminding ourselves of as we begin the conversation.
Dr Mustafa: Yeah, one part of the endocrine system is important for secreting a hormone that will influence another part of the endocrine system. And that new end target will have some kind of function, and then it all loops together. So, for example, the hypothalamus, it secrets out thyrotropin-releasing hormone and that stimulates the anterior pituitary gland to secrete thyroid-stimulating hormone, and then that hormone acts on the thyroid gland itself to produce the final-acting thyroid hormones themselves, like T3 and T4. Now, if any of these are thrown off, then it throws off other parts of the system. So, for example, maybe you're hyperthyroid and you have too much T3 and T4 coming from the thyroid gland. That may signal the hypothalamus and pituitary to reduce levels of thyrotropin-releasing hormone and thyroid-stimulating hormone to in turn affect the thyroid gland and help reduce production of those end-target thyroid hormone. Or vice versa, it just depends on the condition. You can see this at all aspects of the system at various accesses. So, it's kind of this complicated neural network in a way, but just from endocrine purposes, glands and hormones.
Dr Smith: I wonder if we can start talking about the pituitary gland. Your article has all kinds of really cool information. One pearl that I wasn't really aware of is that 10% of adults have a pituitary microadenoma. It's pretty amazing. You point out that most of these aren't clinically significant, but they clearly come up on, kind of, an evaluation now and again. I mean, how should our listeners sort through how to approach these situations, right? Most of them aren't clinically significant, but some of them are. What does a neurologist need to know about this?
Dr Mustafa: Yeah, To me, it's like anything else in our field. You scan enough people, you're going to find incidental things. You scan a spine, you're probably going to find a disc herniation. The question is, how clinically relevant is that and how is that affecting your patient? What are the things you need to be worried about and how do you work through it? As you mentioned, yeah, 10% of the population has a pituitary microadenoma. Those are the small ones. Most of them are clinically insignificant. So, if you find it, you know, usually it's not something to worry about too much. You might repeat serial imaging just to make sure it's not growing. But if they're not having neurologic symptoms because of mass effect or physiologic symptoms because of hormonal effect, then most of the time it's just an incidental finding and you just have to work really hard to reassure your patient. Now sometimes, there can be mass effect as the tumor itself grows, as benign tumor, or there can be hormonal effects. And then you might start thinking about how you're going to intervene.
Dr Smith: Let's talk about macroadenomas and mass effect. You spend some time, and I actually have a really good example of pituitary apoplexy as well as the relationship between macroadenomas and other headache syndromes. So maybe you can talk about the relationship between macroadenomas and headache?
Dr Mustafa: Yeah. So, you know, when pituitary adenomas become large, usually over 10 millimeters or so, we call it a macroadenoma. And the neurologic symptoms that come to play are usually because of mass effect. I think many of us are trained to recognize visual defects like a, you know, bitemporal hemianopia from compression of the optic chiasm. That's one of the classic things. But even just the mass effect alone in that area can cause symptoms like headache. Many of this will be, you know, migrainous in nature. Sometimes you can get a typical trigeminal-type phenomenon, just given everything that's in the region. And with something like pituitary apoplexy that you alluded to, I mean, that usually comes on very quickly. It can be a thunderclap headache. So, not all thunderclap headaches are subarachnoid hemorrhage from aneurysms. You have to think about other things on the differential, and that includes pituitary apoplexy.
Dr Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I found interesting was the fact that headaches can be associated with pituitary macronoma that are migranous or even look like a trigeminal autonomic cephalgia. I mean, is that something that commonly influences your management of either the headache or the macroadenoma? I mean, if you have a patient with a macroadenoma, do you treat the headache syndrome any differently, or are you particularly attentive for pituitary findings in someone that you're scanning because of headache?
Dr Mustafa: Yeah. From my perspective, if I know there's a pituitary macroadenoma and they have these associated headaches, my practice is in general to treat the headache symptomatically, focusing on the phenotype, whether it's migrainous or more, you know, like an attack, a trigeminal autonomic cephalalgia. Now if it starts with they had an atypical headache like a trigeminal autonomic cephalgia, maybe I'm doing the imaging as a result of that to explore why they may be having this from a structural perspective. And if indeed it is because of a pituitary macroadenoma, we'll probably be monitoring the characteristics of the adenoma on a serial basis to see how it transforms over time. And if it's enlarging, you know, those symptoms might be a reason to consider intervention from a surgical resection standpoint.
Dr Smith: So, I wonder if we should pivot and talk a little bit about how neurologists encounter patients who have symptoms related to endocrine disorders. And presumably the clues come with the impact of the distal endocrine gland, for instance, either over- or underproduction of the thyroid hormone. Is that the right way of thinking of it? And then, you know, having identified that, you'll start to look whether it's a primary glandular problem or upstream in the pituitary.
Dr Mustafa: Absolutely. That's in general my approach. You know, often these patients are coming to the neurologist with specific symptomatology, and being familiar with how that's related to the endocrine system is what's important. So, I try to organize this article kind of by parts of the endocrine system and how that's related to neurologic manifestations. But really, it's about being familiar. So, if the patient presents in a comatose status and it's not a clear-cut structural reason, neurologically, as to why they're comatose, you might be exploring metabolic reasons for their coma. You may find disturbances in thyroid hormone levels, and that can influence you to work your way back up the axis---just like you mentioned, Gordon---to see where the problem is coming from that influences the thyroid problem.
Dr Smith: So, you know, maybe we can use that as a good hook to hang our coat on, right? So we have a patient in the unit, comatose, not clear why. Are there specific pearls or indicators that would trigger you to really think about, is this a thyroid problem? Is it adrenal or whatnot? I mean, you give some great examples of, like, myxedema coma, which is very interesting. But what's the clue that we should be going down this pathway? Or, you know, on the other extreme, do you just look for thyroid abnormalities in everyone with a coma that you're having a hard time figuring out?
Dr Mustafa: Great question. I am slightly more of a traditionalist in my approach to neurologic disease that, instead of shotgunning every single possible test, I try to localize in any way I can. And what's cool about these disorders of the endocrine system is that there's so much on your examination that can help clue you in. And it's not just the neurologic exam, it's the systemic exam as well, too. So, important to keep an eye out for those things. Since we're on the topic of thyroid, patients with mixed edema coma, you know, they may have neurologic signs like myoedema, etc, but they may also have systemic signs like hair loss, changes in weight, changes in temperature regulation, that you can pick up on history as well, too. And it's putting all that together to localize to not just part of the nervous system now, but part of the body that helps you with your testing. And that's how I tend to approach things.
Dr Smith: So, so many questions I have for you. I wonder, can we talk a little bit about Hashimoto's encephalopathy?
Dr Mustafa: Oh, yes, absolutely.
Dr Smith: What's the deal there? That's something I've always found a little bit challenging. So, when should we think about it? There are lots of people out there with elevated thyroperoxase antibodies. How do you make the connection between serology and clinical phenotype and management?
Dr Mustafa: Yeah, it's a great point of contention among groups, this diagnosis of Hashimoto encephalopathy. There are those that believe in this is a distinct autoimmune, essentially encephalitis entity associated with abnormal thyroid antibodies. And then there are those that believe that patients have this encephalopathy, but it's just incidental that we find these abnormalities in thyroid testing. What I'll tell you is there's been some really nice studies looking at Hashimoto's or what's to be Hashimoto's encephalopathy, and most patients that present with what is thought to be that actually have normal thyroid function studies. The other thing is finding abnormal antithyroid antibodies is also pretty prevalent in the general population. So, I think in my approach to thinking about Hashimoto's encephalopathy, you've just got to take everything with a grain of salt. You got to recognize that some things are just very prevalent, and you have to keep your clinical suspicion high for what you normally would see and consider other things on the differential. My personal thought is that there probably is some unique antibody-driven disease process that represents what we think of as Hashimoto's encephalopathy, but we just haven't fully classified what that antibody may be quite yet. And then there's probably some overlap, because in general a lot of these thyroid diseases themselves are reflective of underlying autoimmunity. So, there's probably something going on, but I don't think it's a direct effect of something like, you know, thyroid peroxidase antibodies.
Dr Smith: Maybe we should pivot and spend a little time talking about the most common endocrine disorder that we encounter in neurologic practice, which is diabetes. And as I mentioned earlier, it's a topic near and dear to my heart. What's the latest that our listeners should know about regarding peripheral nervous system complications of diabetes? We're all familiar with distal symmetric polyneuropathy. Or are there other new updates or pearls that we should be thinking about?
Dr Mustafa: Absolutely. So, the complications on the nervous system extend far beyond just your distal symmetric polyneuropathy is probably the most common thing we see, but you can get all sorts of unique manifestations. In fact, I recently just took care of a patient that had many of these. You can get a single thoracic radiculopathy. You can have what we see often at Mayo Clinic here, a diabetic lamosacral radicule plexus neuropathy where patients have profound, initially, usually pain in their lower limbs, and then this spreading of profound weakness in their lower limbs. That can be a huge complication of association with rapid control of glycemic status. And especially this day and age where we have newer medications that are very effective at controlling diabetes, we're seeing this more and more. I wrote this article before some recent publications that come out highlighting the association with GLP-1 agonists. But with these types of medication, rapid glycemic control can result in, you know, associated DLRPN quite frequently.
Dr Smith: Yeah, it's interesting. I think we think of the, kind of the neuro-ophthalmological manifestations or risks of GLP-1 agonists, but the relationship too, of treatment-induced neuropathy and diabetes. And I'm curious of your experience. My sense is that if you aren't attuned to these sort of problems, you often miss them. And you certainly see people that come close to having surgical interventions or, you know, end up going off in the wrong direction with these acute neuropathies that I think are probably a little more common than we often give them credit for.
Dr Mustafa: Absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, learning about these things and being familiar is very important. It's important to keep a good broad differential because there can be mimickers, whether it's infectious things or malignant things like lymphoma, but I wanted to highlight in this article how common something like diabetic radiculoplexus, Lumbosacral radiculoplexus neuropathy can be. I mean, in fact, we see this more than things like Guillain-Barré syndrome, CIDP, etc. And so, I think practicing neurologists everywhere should at least be familiar and know what to look for so that they can make the diagnosis appropriately when they encounter patients with these debilitating diseases that can improve significantly.
Dr Smith: So, I have one other diabetes question. That's a central nervous system complication that I wasn't particularly familiar with, and I'd love to hear you talk about a little more. And that is the diabetic striatopathy. Am I saying that right?
Dr Mustafa: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Dr Smith: Yeah. Talk to us about that. That's pretty cool.
Dr Mustafa: Yeah. You know, I think many of us that practice in the hospital setting will encounter patients with severe hyperglycemia. We're trained to recognize it as a stroke mimic. So many times these patients will come in, you know, glucose is in the six hundreds, thousands. And they might be just comatose, they might have focal neurologic signs that can mimic stroke. But one unique feature to be on the lookout for is diabetic striatopathy. And it's really thought to be an influence of out-of-range glycemic control on the basal ganglia itself. And so, these patients can present with unilateral hemibilismus, hemichorrhea, essentially a basal ganglia disorder. If you image them, you'll often see T1 hyperintensity in the striatum on MRI. And as you control the glycemic status, these patients improve. And it's just a unique phenomenon, but it's not- you know, many neurologists will see one of these probably in their careers. So, it's not something that's super rare that you'll never see it.
Dr Smith: I think we're probably about out of time, Rafid. I wonder if there's anything that I didn't ask you about that you really think our listeners would like to hear. What nugget did I miss? And there are a great many from which you have to pick, I'm sure.
Dr Mustafa: I think you've done such a great job. It's been a pleasure to chat with you. For me, the biggest takeaway for everyone to be aware of is oftentimes the first manifestation of something being off with the endocrine system will be something neurologic. And so, these patients may present to the neurologist first, or the neurologist will be consulted first, for something that seems purely neurologic. But it's important for us to have a high index of suspicion that the root cause could be something outside of the nervous system to help guide management down the line. When you're facing a patient with coma or peripheral neuropathy or myopathy or unique syndromes like the LRPN, remember to look beyond the nervous system, as this could be a very big clue to helping patients recover from disorders that are very, very treatable.
Dr Smith: Rafid, thank you so much. It's been a great conversation. Your article is truly outstanding. Topic is kind of complicated, but it's not as complicated as I thought it was going into it. And I certainly learned a lot and enjoyed it a great deal. So, thank you for spending time with me today. 
Dr Mustafa: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Dr Smith: Again, today I've been interviewing Dr Rafid Mustafa from the Mayo Clinic about his article on neurologic complications of endocrine disorders, which appears in the February 2026 Continuum issue on neurology of systemic disease. Be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this and other issues of Continuum, and thanks for joining us today.
Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use the link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.

Many serious medical illnesses are associated with some degree of serum electrolyte abnormality, renal impairment, or both. The neurologist must determine if the patient's neurologic symptoms are related to the renal and electrolyte disturbances or whether a concurrent primary neurologic process is at play.
In this episode, Casey Albin, MD, speaks with Eelco F. M. Wijdicks, MD, PhD, FAAN, FACP, FNCS, author of the article "Neurologic Manifestations of Renal and Electrolyte Disorders" in the Continuum® February 2026 Neurology of Systemic Disease issue.
Dr. Albin is a Continuum® Audio interviewer, associate editor of media engagement, and an assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Wijdicks is a professor of neurology and attending neurointensivist for the Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Additional Resources
Read the article: Neurologic Manifestations of Renal and Electrolyte Disorders
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Host: @caseyalbin
Guest: @EWijdicks
Full episode transcript available here