CT findings in spastic cerebral palsy. Clinical, aetiological and prognostic aspects.

After the introduction of cranial computed tomography (CT) it is now possible by an atraumatic procedure to evaluate the pathophysiological findings in children suffering from cerebral palsy (CP). The aim of this study is to describe the cranial CT findings in children with CP and relate these to CP-type, grade of handicap, aetiology, and presence of other functional cerebral defects. The CT-examination was performed in 83 children with spastic CP (44 boys and 39 girls). Fifty-seven children (67%) had pathological CT. There was no statistically significant difference between the frequencies of pathological CT findings in the groups with tetraplegia, diplegia, and paraplegia. The frequency of pathological CT findings was increasing with increasing severity of the motor handicap (p less than 0.05). There were significantly more children with pathological CT findings among CP children suffering from epilepsy, than among CP children without epilepsy (p less than 0.05). The CP children with the lowest IQ, had numerical more pathological CT findings but there was no significant difference among pathological CT findings in CP children with oligophrenia compared to the rest of the group. Infarction, its sequelae and hemiatrophy were much more frequent in patients with hemiplegia (p less than 0.001) compared to the other CP-types. The most frequent pathological CT finding was atrophy (44 cases among 56 pathological CT). Central atrophy with enlargement of the ventricular system or parts of this was found in 39 children.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)