Background: Transient global amnesia (TGA) is a clinical syndrome characterized by a temporary short-term memory loss with inability to retain new memories, usually lasting 2 to 8 h. TGA may be related to several medical procedures, including angiography, general anesthesia, gastroscopy.
Case presentation: We report a 58-year-old woman who experiencing TGA one hour after the execution of her first-time nasopharyngeal swab for COVID-19. Brain MRI showed a typical punctate Diffusion Weight Image (DWI) hippocampal lesion.
Conclusions: This is the first report of TGA after the execution of nasopharyngeal swab for COVID-19. This association lengthen the list of medical procedures associated with TGA, and we discuss the possible plausible mechanisms by which a nasopharyngeal swab could trigger TGA.
Keywords: COVID-19; Case report; Nasopharyngeal swab; SARS-COV-2; TGA.