Acute cerebral nerve paresis can be caused in many different ways. One of the more rare causes of paresis of one or more neural pathways is dissection of the internal carotid artery. Early diagnosis is important, even with atypical symptoms, since prompt anticoagulative therapy can hinder stroke from embolism due to the dissection. We report on two patients with Raeder's syndrome and Collet-Sicard syndrome resulting from dissection of the internal carotid artery. Besides the cranial and caudal nerves involved in our study, loss of function has also been reported with the sixth to eighth cranial nerves, so that any painful, sudden cranial nerve deficiency can indicate possible carotid dissection
