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Erschienen in:
01.08.2012 | Original Paper
Third ventriculostomy in infants younger than 1 year old
Erschienen in: Child's Nervous System | Ausgabe 8/2012
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Introduction
Endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) gains more attention each day in the treatment of hydrocephalus. Some authors have questioned the effectiveness of the procedure for the treatment of infants younger than 1 year. More recent studies revealed that the effectiveness of the procedure is more related to the etiology of the disease than to the age of the patient.
Materials and methods
We studied retrospectively the effectiveness of third ventriculostomy in our service: 75 endoscopic procedures, from which 48 were ETVs. Among the ETVs, 30 were used to treat aqueductal stenosis, three for Dandy–Walker, eight for Chiari type II.
Results
When the patients were stratified by the etiology of the hydrocephalus, there was a statistically significant difference among the groups studied with higher success among patients with aqueductal stenosis the (90 %) and lower for the treatment of Chiari II-related hydrocephalus (50 % of success). With the patients stratified by age groups, there was no significant difference in terms of the success of the treatment.
Conclusion
Our results have shown that the effectiveness of ETV is not actually age-related, but etiology-related.