The diagnosis and management of transient global amnesia in the emergency department.

Transient Global Amnesia (TGA) is a benign and temporary loss of anterograde memory with the preservation of remote memories and immediate recall. TGA was first described in 1956 and since then epilepsy, transient ischaemic attacks (TIA), migraine and now intracranial venous stasis have been implicated in its aetiology. Precipitants of TGA include physical exertion and valsalva-like manoeuvres. In order to diagnose TGA the criteria created by Hodge and Warlow in 1990 can be used. This requires the episode of memory loss to be witnessed and involve anterograde amnesia. The patient must not have any evidence of neurological signs or deficits, features of epilepsy, active epilepsy or recent head injury. Finally the episode must have resolved within 24 h. In this case study the patient's symptoms are mistakenly attributed to a TIA. There is no increased risk of TIA or CVA in patients who have had TGA and there are no increased levels of mortality amongst these patients. In this article we aim to help doctors working in the emergency department to diagnose and manage TGA.