[A case of Avellis' syndrome with ipsilateral central facial palsy due to a small medullary infarction].

We report a 51-year-old man with mild left central facial palsy and left Avellis' syndrome due to a small medullary infarction. On admission, neurological examination revealed hoarseness, dysphasia, absent left gag reflex, palsies of the left vocal cord and left soft palate, and hypalgesia and thermohypesthesia on the right side of the trunk and extremities. In addition, he had a mild left central facial palsy. He had no nausea, vomiting, vertigo, hiccups, nystagmus, Horner's sign, facial numbness, or paresis or ataxia of the limbs. A T2 weighted MRI showed a small, high signal intensity area in the left dorsal region of the medulla and this lesion was presumed to involve the nucleus ambiguus and a part of the spinothalamic tract. These findings suggest that an aberrant supranuclear pathway, looping around the nucleus ambiguus to the facial nucleus exists in our patient.