Intro & Hydrocephalus
scott h. hargrave (afn02091@afn.org)
Mon, 11 Mar 1996 13:09:48 -0500 (EST)
Hi,
Our twins (Joshua and Stephanie) were born 1/24/95, 10.5 weeks
early. He weighed 1.5 lbs (IUGR) and she 2.5 lbs. They were born via an
emergency C-section due to preeclampsia and Joshua's placenta abrupting at
a scheduled appt, right before the doctor's eyes. Unfortunately, Joshua
had major complications and died after 2.5 days. Stephanie is now 46 days
old, still in NICU, and doing quite well. She has had a number of the
typical premie problems along the way, but so far she has overcome them.
She had a grade 2 bleed in the first days of life, which when checked a
few weeks later, was called a grade 3 bleed because although the blood had
readsorbed, her lateral ventricles had enlarged considerably (1 cm.
diameter where they should be no more than .2 cm).
She has hydrocephalus. They are checking her weekly via ultrasound to
monitor any changes and determine if she will need to be shunted. It
appears that the ventricles are remaining the same size so it appears they
will not require shunting. Since her head circumference did not appear to
enlarge when the ventricles did, they said her brain was smaller. They
did not have much information on the long term prognosis for babies that
suffer from this condition. We are interested in any information &/or
experiences others have in this area, so we can know what to look for and
intervene early to help her if possible.