Deviation of eyes and head in acute cerebral stroke

Background  

It is a well-known phenomenon that some patients with acute left or right hemisphere stroke show a deviation of the eyes (Prévost's sign) and head to one side. Here we investigated whether both right- and left-sided brain lesions may cause this deviation. Moreover, we studied the relationship between this phenomenon and spatial neglect. In contrast to previous studies, we determined not only the discrete presence or absence of eye deviation with the naked eye through clinical inspection, but actually measured the extent of horizontal eye-in-head and head-on-trunk deviation. In further contrast, measurements were performed early after stroke onset (1.5 days on average).