Hydrocephalus Description

Hydrocephalus Description

The symptoms and course of hydrocephalus vary widely depending on the person’s age, the cause of the condition, and its severity. In infants, the bony plates that form the skull have not yet completed their joining together. This incomplete development of the skull allows the infant’s head to expand from the pressure of the CSF, sometimes very rapidly. The baby may vomit, sleep a lot, be irritable, or have seizures. In older children and adults, the skull has already completed its development and the buildup of CSF results in increased pressure on the tissues of the brain and spinal cord. Hydrocephalus in these age groups is more likely to produce such symptoms as headaches, double vision, vomiting, problems with balance or coordination, drowsiness, personality changes, or other signs of damage to the central nervous system.

Mother carrying her six-month- old son, who has hydrocephalus, in Calcutta, India. AP IMAGES.

An Unusual Case of Hydrocephalus

In July 2007, the British medical journal The Lancet published a report by three French surgeons who had treated a forty-four-year-old man in a Marseille hospital for weakness in his left leg. When the doctors performed some imaging studies of the man’s brain, they were amazed to find that the ventricles in his brain had filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to the point that his brain had been crushed against the sides of his skull. There was very little brain tissue left. The chief surgeon was quoted as saying, “The images [from the scans] were most unusual…the brain was virtually absent.”

The surgeons thought that the man’s condition was the result of an operation he had had at the age of six months to treat hydrocephalus. Although the man had an IQ of 75, somewhat below normal, he had led a normal life without any unusual medical symptoms until his leg dis- order. He was married and the father of two children and was employed as a civil servant. The surgeons treated the man by inserting a new shunt to drain the excess CSF, which relieved his leg symptoms and allowed him to return to work.

Elderly adults with normal-pressure hydrocephalus often have difficulties with bladder con- trol and movement as well as dementia. Because these symptoms are also found in such disorders as Parkinson disease or Alzheimer disease, many older adults with NPH are never properly diag- nosed or treated.