About Hydrocephalus

Effects of Hydrocephalus (continued)

Psychological development in children and adolescents with hydrocephalus may proceed normally, but sometimes the changes associated with puberty (breast development, body hair growth etc) appear much earlier than expected, and the intrusion of psychological aspects of sexual development into a mind which is emotionally still very immature can cause distressing problems (see 'Precocious puberty', Again, specialist advice should be sought if necessary. Other effects of hydrocephalus may also be seen, and some of these are difficult to explain. For instance, some people are very seriously distressed by every-day noises such as vacuum cleaners or washing machines.

One effect of raised CSF pressure may be seen in the eyes, and this is why your doctor sometimes looks for 'papilloedema'. This is caused by pressure on the blood supply to the back of the eye. It is important to realise that it may not always be present, even when the pressure is high. If CSF pressure remains high for too long, damage to the optic nerves can become permanent resulting in blindness, though fortunately nowadays this is uncommon. Another appearance, particularly in babies, is the so-called 'sunset' eye sign, where the eyes are fixed in a downward position. This is due to CSF pressure affecting important nerves running from the brain which control eye movement.

If untreated the rise in CSF pressure can cause other serious problems in the brain, unrelated to blood supply. Many of our vital functions, such as heartbeat, breathing etc, are controlled from the brain stem, a structure joining the spinal cord to the brain. Very high CSF pressure can compress this sufficiently to cause the heart and breathing to stop. Once again, this is uncommon as signs of raised pressure are usually recognised before this. A similar problem might sometimes arise, particularly in those with spina bifida, due to compression of the cerebellum, a part of the brain lying at the back of the head. This can also give rise to breathing, speaking and swallowing difficulties.

About 1:3 children with hydrocephalus will develop epilepsy which will be treated by a neurologist.

Reading a catalogue of the effects of hydrocephalus, such as I have produced here, can be very alarming. However, it should be realised that some people with hydrocephalus may have very few of these problems, and hopefully none of the more serious ones. Also, many of those which I have described are found either in untreated hydrocephalus or when the treatment fails, and when successful treatment has been promptly introduced they often improve or sometimes disappear. On the other hand, the more subtle learning and reasoning problems are usually present in some degree and are very important where a child's development and education are concerned.
There can be learning difficulties associated with hydrocephalus such as problems with learning difficulties, behaviour, motivation and visual problems:

I hope you will have gained a little insight from these few pages on what Hydrocephalus is and the causes, and effects it has. We gratefully thank ASBAH for their help in the compiling of this article.

David.