ICD-11 classes
05 Endocrine, nutritional or metabolic diseases
Nutritional disorders
Undernutrition
5B5A — Vitamin B1 deficiency
5B5A.1 — Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome

ICD-11 5B5A.1 — Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome

A thiamine-deficiency syndrome characterised by symmetric hyperaemic lesions of the brainstem, hypothalamus, thalamus, and mammillary bodies with glial proliferation, capillary dilatation, and perivascular haemorrhage. The syndrome is manifested by a confusional state, disorientation, ophthalmoplegia, nystagmus, diplopia, and ataxia (Wernicke encephalopathy), with severe loss of memory for recent events and confabulation (the invention of accounts of events to cover the loss of memory) (Korsakov psychosis) occurring following recovery. Defective binding of thiamine diphosphate by transketolase has been found. It appears that the disorder is of autosomal recessive inheritance but is expressed as clinical disease only in the event of thiamine deficiency.

The diagnosis includes nothing.

Diagnosis with code 5B5A.1 contains 4 clarifying diagnoses:

1. 5B5A.10 — Wernicke encephalopathy
2. 5B5A.11 — Korsakoff syndrome
3. 5B5A.1Y — Other specified Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome
4. 5B5A.1Z — Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, unspecified