Lidocaine toxicity misinterpreted as a stroke.

For more than 50 years lidocaine has been used to treat ventricular arrhythmias. Neurologic dysfunction, manifested as a stroke, occurred acutely in an 87-year-old woman after she had been administered repeated doses of lidocaine, a lidocaine infusion, then an intravenous amiodarone infusion for ventricular tachycardia. This was ultimately diagnosed as lidocaine toxicity with a serum lidocaine level of 7.