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Originally Posted by tlmerrie
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I'm not a medical professional, but the only children I've seen be diagnosed with hydrocephalus and needing a VP shunt were diagnosed at birth or after a traumatic brain injury. Make sure that your pediatrician has lots of experience in dealing with special needs children if this is the case. Hopefully, it will just be macrocephaly with a gross motor delay or something like that.
Amy
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I know it's been ages since the OP wrote this thread but I wanted to add my two cents, sorry this is the first time I saw this thread!
My biological daughter had a regular sized head at birth.
At her 6 month check there was a noticeable incline on her growth charts for head size. By a year old she was also "off the charts." She was then given a CT scan, and subsequently an MRI, she had to be sedated for both and we were petrified! They found a massive amount of CSF to the front of her brain. She had never once fallen, gotten konked in the head or been abused by anyone. I was a stay at home mom with no other children at the time and the only people that ever watched her were my parents so I KNEW. As long as it wasn't affecting her any other way besides head size her docs wanted to take a wait and see approach, and we all agreed that was best at the time. We were all hopeful that whatever it was that was causing the buildup would eventually resolve itself just fine.
At 15 months out of the blue she started spinning in circles, almost obsessively and she also started to lose some words in her vocabulary. We had the shunt placed within a week of that starting. The neurosurgeon found benign cerebro-spinal fluid to the front of her brain. For some reason it still wasn't draining like it was supposed to which was causing her head to grow even larger to the front and possibly putting pressure on her brain (which was likely causing her spinning and word loss). There are cases where there are blockages in the ventricles that route the CSF to the brain too, hence VP "Ventriculoperitoneal shunt." This was not her case but is another explination.
After the shunt was placed she went back to being the intelligent, sweet, focused darling she always was and to this day is far advanced in all areas of development compared to other children her age. We were perplexed about what caused the CSF build up in the first place still and after further investigation (and several pediatric neurologist/neurosurgeon specialist evaluations) they came to the conclusion that she may have something called Neurofibromitosis (specifically NF1). She has cafe-au-lait spots, lisch nodules and the macrocephaly which would confirm the diagnosis. Thank goodness she doesn't show any of the fibromas that make the disease debilitating but I wanted the OP to know there are countless other diagnosis besides abuse to explain what could be happening with your daughter. Unless blood is found in the CSF or actual brain damage is found on the MRI or CT scans the likely hood that this had anything to do with abuse is slim to none.
I hope you have found some answers since this was posted and best of luck to you and your family
