The Blues halfback Piri Weepu is expected to be able to resume his rugby career, despite suffering a minor stroke.
After complaining of migraine-like symptoms for the past few weeks, the former All Black had an MRI scan earlier this week.
The Blues doctor Stephen Kara says he will have more tests to determine the cause of the stroke, which appears to have occurred before the team travelled to South Africa earlier this month. Weepu went on to play three more games before the stroke diagnosis.
But Dr Kara says Weepu's problem didn't come from any concussive event or blow, and is instead possibly a not-uncommon clot resulting from a heart problem - which is why it didn't show up on their initial tests.
He says a stroke would've been one of the medical team's first thoughts had Weepu been a much older man, but as a healthy 30-year-old athlete, and due to the small, subtle area of the relevant scan, it wasn't immediately obvious until the more detailed MRI scan.
Dr Kara says Weepu's long-term playing future looks pretty good and he's expected to make a full recovery, though he won't be taking the field for at least a month.
The results of further scans won't be known until Friday at least, but it's thought Weepu's heart may have been responsible for causing a clot on his brain.
If that's the case, Weepu will be put on some long-term heart-thinning medication which will still allow him to safely play rugby.
Should the heart scan show a defect in the heart, such as a small hole - which Dr Kara says is quite common in such cases - then Weepu will undergo heart surgery to correct that.
