Hs. Wang et al., SONOGRAPHIC LENTICULOSTRIATE VASCULOPATHY IN INFANTS - SOME ASSOCIATIONS AND A HYPOTHESIS, American journal of neuroradiology, 16(1), 1995, pp. 97-102
Citations number
19
Categorie Soggetti
Neurosciences,"Radiology,Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
PURPOSE: To describe the causes of infantile lenticulostriate vasculop
athy (LSV) as demonstrated by sonography and propose the pathogenesis
of these findings. METHODS: Five hundred eighty-six infants were exami
ned via echoencephalography because of seizures, psychomotor retardati
on, dysmorphism, congenital malformation, microcephaly, macrocephaly,
bulging of anterior fontanel, consciousness disturbance, or prematurit
y. We directed our attention on the sonographic study to the basal gan
glionic and thalamic areas. Twenty-eight of the 586 patients underwent
color Doppler studies. RESULTS: In 34 infants with gray-scale neuroso
nographic findings of LSV, 16 were associated with various causes that
have been reported before. In 8 patients entities not previously asso
ciated with LSV were found: neonatal lupus, neonatal hypoglycemia, unc
omplicated prematurity, encephalitis, and head injury. In the remainin
g 10 cases, a specific cause could not be found. The LSV was found in
16 (40%), 5 (14%), and 13 (3%) patients with perinatal, acquired, and
nonspecific causes, respectively. Generally, this is an uncommon findi
ng because it was observed in only 34 (5.8%) of the study infants; 24
of these 34 had a documented cause of the vasculopathy. With LSV assoc
iated with perinatal causes there was a greater chance of sonographic
LSV's developing than with that of acquired causes. CONCLUSIONS: We su
ggest that sonographic LSV is a nonspecific marker of a previous insul
t to the developing brain, and the special hemodynamics of the fetal b
rain plays an important role in its pathogenesis.