22130              FAT EMBOLISM

No clinical information is available except that the patient was a women aged 21 who sustained multiple fractures including right femur, left tibia and fibula, right clavicle, left radius and ulna.

The specimen consists of a coronal slice through the hemispheres and an oblique slice through the cerebellum and brain stem.  There are multiple small petechial haemorrhages in the hemispheric white matter, the internal capsules, the corpus callosum and the thalami.  The grey matter is almost entirely spared.  Both hemispheres are symmetrically swollen and the cavities of the lateral ventricles and the 3rd ventricle are greatly compressed.  There are similar small petechial haemorrhages in the white matter of the cerebellar hemispheres and in the superior cerebellar peduncle and the tegmentum of the upper pons.