Cerebral atrophy

[Chanel5_girl]

My husband suffered a heart attack in Nov 2007, and had a estimated down time of 10 minutes which resulted in an anoxic brain injury. He was in a coma for approximately 6 weeks, and his prognosis was very grim in the beginning.  However in the last 6 months, he has woken from his coma, began speaking, has a good handle on a lot of long term memories, but his short term is suffering.  He is now eating regular food at least once a day with his speech therapist.  He is also reading flash cars, word problem solving, and doing math problems as well.  A few days ago a doctor told me that his old MRI (taken about a month ago) shows cerebral atrophy, however in his opinion, he felt it may not have been from the cardiac arrest, and led me to believe it may have been this way prior?  In researching cerebral atrophy, I cannot find any links between what happened to him and this disorder.  Any thoughts?

[gostarks]

So you're saying the cerebral atrophy is most likely due to the anoxic brain injury, right? Not the heart attack?

[DrNavneetMD]

Hello Dear,
Heart attack may lead to complications like embolus,cerebral atrophy,haemorrhage etc.Cerebral atrophy may be associated with the cardiac attack and must have developed with the ischaemia and coma may be the result of the atrophy.There seems to be definite relation of the atrophy with the cardiac attack
Best