Among all cases of ocular misalignment from cranial nerve palsies, third nerve palsies are important because a subset of these are caused by life-threatening aneurysms. The true incidence of third nerve palsies and the relative incidence of the various etiologies are largely unknown. Prior studies
1-4 have indicated that aneurysms account from anywhere from 10% to 30% of cases. These studies were from academic tertiary referral centers and, therefore, were not population-based and may suffer from a referral bias toward more severe patients.