Occipital Encephalocele and Review of Literature

Abstract

Encephalocele is a rare congenital malformation of the central nervous system. It is defined as a congenital herniation of the intracranial compartments through a long defect and contains various rudimentary cerebral tissue components or sometimes only cerebrospinal fluid. They are located at midline of parietal or occipital region when the defect is small. Usually only the meninges herniate and the anomaly is cranial Meningocele or cranium bifidum with Meningocele. We present 47 cases of encephalocele, mostly occipital encephalocele, operated during last 5 years in our hospital at the department of Neurosurgery SZH, RYK. This is a retrospective study.
Material and Methods: Between January 2008 and December 2013. Forty seven cases of encephalocele have been treated at our department. They were diagnosed on the basis of clinical findings and CT scan was done in all patients. All patients were operated and diagnosis was confirmed at peroperatively. Demographic, clinical, radiological and operative data were reviewed from hospital charts.
Results: The total number of patients was 47, out of which 23 were male and 24 were female. Neurosurgical data of patients with encephalocele over the five years and three months from January 2008 to April 2014 were retrospectively studied. The average age of the patients at the time presentation was 10 months and seven days.
Conclusion: Encephalocele is a relatively uncommon neurosurgical entity largely seen in the pediatric population. Treatment of this condition can be rewarding if properly managed early. Occipital, parietal, frontal, and frontonasal types may be approached without opening the cranium, while sincipital and basal encephalocele usually require craniotomy. In this series we present our experience in the operative management of encepha-locele with good outcome and also share our recommendation in technical consideration for surgical approaches.