Prognostic factors in encephalocele : a fourteen-year survey at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah

Abstract EN

This study describes a 14-year follow-up of infants with encephalocele seen at King Abdulaziz University Hospital from 1988 to 2002.

Out of 13 cases, only ten were born among the 35,851 births recorded in that period.

Only occipital subtype was found.

Three of them had meningocele, nine cases had meningoencephalocele and only one had meningoencephalocystocele.

Eight patients developed hydrocephaly.

Only 5 of these patients needed a ventriculoperitoneal shunt insertion, one of them without encephalocele repair.

One patient was diagnosed as having Patau’s Syndrome (47 XY + 13) with congenital glaucoma and ventriculomegaly.

One case had Meckel-Gruber syndrome.

Seven patients were contacted, interviewed and/or examined in the outpatient clinic for developmental assessment.

Four of them had normal mental and physical development for age.

The rest were developmentally delayed.

The aim of this study was to investigate the possible prognostic parameters, looking for the most influential risk factors that affected the morbidity and mortality of the study’s patients.

The authors concluded that the size of the bone defect, the brain content of the sac, the associated hydrocephalus and syndromes are important factors that influence the prognosis of occipital encephalocele from both mortality or morbidity points of view.