Journal of child neurology
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Although the guidelines for the diagnosis of brain death in children are well established, the diagnosis is still under debate, and further confirmatory tests are required. Performing these confirmatory tests presents some drawbacks, such as high costs, the need for specialized personnel and technology, transportation of patients out of the intensive care unit, and the use of contrast media. Bispectral index monitoring can provide real-time, objective, continuous monitoring of the consciousness level in critically ill children. ⋯ According to our study, the decrease in bispectral index score to 0 in patients with suspected brain death can support and confirm brain death diagnosis in children and can enable scheduling of expensive tests, such as cerebral angiography, in the appropriate time. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to determine the role of the bispectral index in the diagnosis and confirmation of brain death in children. In this article, we review clinical utility, application time, and interpretation of bispectral index monitoring in confirmation of brain death diagnosis in children.
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In relation to the adult brain, the immature brain might be more vulnerable to damage during and following traumatic brain injury, particularly in white-matter tracts. Given well-established evidence of corpus callosum atrophy, we hypothesized that anterior commissure volume (using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]) in this structure would be decreased in children with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury relative to typically developing children. Second, given the purported role of the anterior commissure in interhemispheric axon conveyance between temporal lobes, we hypothesized that temporal lobe white matter, temporal lesion volume, and injury severity (Glasgow Coma Scale score) would be predictive of decreased anterior commissure cross-sectional volume in patients with traumatic brain injury. ⋯ Diffusion tensor imaging fractional anisotropy values differed between the groups for the temporal stem-anterior commissure system, with the traumatic brain injury group exhibiting decreased fractional anisotropy. The anterior commissure, like the corpus callosum, appears to be highly vulnerable to white-matter degenerative changes resulting from mechanisms such as the direct impact of trauma, progressive axonal injury as tissue in other brain regions atrophies, or myelin degeneration. This is the first systematic examination of anterior commissure atrophy following traumatic brain injury using in vivo quantitative MRI and diffusion tensor imaging fiber tracking in pediatric subjects.
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Sudden unexplained death in epilepsy is rare in children, and few studies report risk factors. We reviewed our experience with 17 cases of sudden unexplained death in epilepsy to determine risk factors in children. The charts of all patients with onset of epilepsy at less than age 18 years who suffered sudden unexplained death in epilepsy between August 1992 and April 2004 at our epilepsy center were retrospectively reviewed. ⋯ There were seven cases of definite, nine cases of probable, and one case of possible sudden unexplained death in epilepsy. Generalized tonic-clonic seizures and prone position during sleep were found to be major risk factors. Sudden unexplained death in epilepsy in children and adolescents is associated with convulsive seizures, and aggressive treatment of nocturnal generalized tonic-clonic seizures might help lower the occurrence.