REVERSIBLE NON-ENHANCING LESIONS WITHOUT FOCAL NEUROLOGICAL DEFICITS IN ECLAMPSIA

Nine patients with eclampsia, were subjected to computerized tomograph ic scan (CT scan) of the head to ascertain the changes in the brain th at accompany seizures and encephalopathy of eclampsia, Only those pati ents who had a seizure within the past 24 h were included in this stud y, None of the patients had any focal neurological deficit. Six of the nine patients had abnormal findings on CT scan consisting of multiple non enhancing hypodensities in the cerebral white matter, One patient also had subependymal haemorrhage over the lateral ventricle. These c hanges were found to have disappeared when the CT scan was repeated on the seventh day, There was no correlation between the mean arterial b lood pressure or the number of seizures and the presence of hypodensit ies in the brain, These findings suggest that subclinical changes in t he form of reversible hypodensities and rarely bleeding can occur in e clampsia even when patients have no focal neurological deficits, It ap pears that these lesions represent focal areas of cerebral oedema, sec ondary to failure of autoregulation of cerebral blood flow.