Laura Fanea1, Shams Rashid1, James P II McAllister2, Jie Li3, Helene Benveniste4, Mei Yu4, Mark E. Wagshul1
1Department of Radiology, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA; 2Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Primary Children's Hospital, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; 3Department of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, MI, USA; 4Medical Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA
Hydrocephalus (HC) represents the leading cause for brain surgery in children in the US. While treatment of HC with ventriculoperitoneal shunting is a well established technique with marked improvement in patient outcome, there are still numerous complications and the mean lifetime of a shunt before needing revision surgery is only a little over one year. The disruption of normal CSF flow and drainage in hydrocephalus is assumed to be the primary pathology of this disease and thus the reestablishment of CSF drainage with the shunt is the logical treatment of choice. However, with the complications associated with shunting and the lack of a clear understanding of the source of CSF blockage in many cases it may be beneficial to study other aspects of the disease. For example, it is well established that there are alterations in cerebral blood flow patterns in the brain in hydrocephalus.
Keywords