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Published in: Child's Nervous System 6/2012

01-06-2012 | Original Paper

A case series of 12 patients with incidental asymptomatic Dandy–Walker syndrome and management

Authors: Vikas Chandra Jha, Raj Kumar, Arun Kumar Srivastav, Anant Mehrotra, Rabi Narayan Sahu

Published in: Child's Nervous System | Issue 6/2012

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Abstract

Purpose

Incidentally detected asymptomatic Dandy–Walker syndrome (DWS) is sparsely reported in literature at extremes of age (from 1 to 75 years) in association with different diseases. Precipitating factors causing DWS in these cases to manifest in late adulthood are still unidentified. We tried to hypothesize the aetiology and the natural course of disease based on review of literature

Material and methods

Twelve cases of asymptomatic DWS were selected retrospectively in this study while being treated for some unrelated disease over a period of 15 years.

Results

All the cases had vermian hypoplasia with sizeable fourth ventricular cyst (more than 3 cm), large posterior fossa and with no or borderline ventriculomegaly on CT/MRI. The age ranged from 1 to 65 years. Five cases presented with head injury and four cases presented with enlarged head size with suboccipital protuberance (noticed in children more than 5 years). Remaining cases presented with either occipital encephalocele or right trigeminal neuralgia or fixed atlantoaxial dislocation. They were asymptomatic for DWS following treatment of the presenting complaints on follow-up of average duration of 4.5 years.

Conclusion

Presentation at extremes of age signifies that slow degenerative changes in communicating channels between fourth ventricular cyst and surrounding basal cisterns may cause asymptomatic DWS to manifest, but cases having good communication between these structures can remain asymptomatic throughout their life.
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Metadata
Title
A case series of 12 patients with incidental asymptomatic Dandy–Walker syndrome and management
Authors
Vikas Chandra Jha
Raj Kumar
Arun Kumar Srivastav
Anant Mehrotra
Rabi Narayan Sahu
Publication date
01-06-2012
Publisher
Springer-Verlag
Published in
Child's Nervous System / Issue 6/2012
Print ISSN: 0256-7040
Electronic ISSN: 1433-0350
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00381-012-1734-8

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