Patients undergoing open heart surgery who have had recent cardiogenic embolic stroke or have central nervous system dysfunction pose a difficult management problem. There is always the risk that cardiopulmonary bypass and heparinization may exacerbate the neurologic injury. There is no clear data indicating what is a safe interval of time from the onset of neurologic symptoms to the time of surgery. Since 1982 we have operated on 15 patients with recent (2 to 28 days, mean 12.7 +/- 7.9 days) neurologic injury. Indications for surgery included recurrent embolization, sepsis, and hemodynamic deterioration. Three patients were comatose with no focal neurologic signs at the time of surgery, and 12 patients had focal neurologic deficits. All patients had preoperative computed tomographic scans. Embolic cerebral infarctions were documented in 12 patients, one patient had evidence of intracranial hemorrhage, and one patient had a subdural hematoma. Fourteen patients had native or prosthetic valvular endocarditis and one patient had a left atrial myxoma. All patients underwent corrective cardiac surgery. One patient died in the postoperative period from multisystem failure; all other patients have been followed since discharge (6 months to 4 years). All surviving patients demonstrated improvement in their neurologic symptoms and eight patients had complete neurologic recovery. The results of this study indicate that open heart surgery can be safely performed in patients with recent neurologic injury.