Hydrocephalus Conference Day 1
Rosanne, Cathy and I are here in Park City at the Hydrocephalus Conference. I had thought today was just registration but they had a session on cognitive and scholastic performance of kids with hydrocephalus so we had to go to that.
A study compared kids with shunted hydrocephalus to kids without hydrocephalus, often their siblings to minimize the number of variables. These were high-functioning hydrocephalics, meaning they were on the same level as their age group in school.
It showed that through middle school the hydrocephalus kids perform as well as their peers in school but average about 15 points lower in IQ. When the look at the individual cognitive tests they see that kids with hydrocephalus have specific weaknesses, specifically verbal memory (remembering what people say to them) and executive function (planning and organization). However they do as well as their peers in visual memory (remembering what they see). So, for example, they have trouble remembering a class lecture unless they take notes and review the notes later.
As they get older, they are expected to be more independent (executive actions) and more of their education is lecture only (verbal memory) so they start to fall behind. They can still do well in high school and college but require particular strategies to succeed. The doctor gave an example of a woman with hydrocephalus who had a PhD yet did poorly on IQ tests.
They looked at many of the conditions that occur alongside hydrocephlus such as seizures and prematurity and found that they weren’t skewing the outcome. So it is something to do with either hydrocephalus itself or the shunt procedure.
They did another study that compared people with shunts to people with ETV. A shunt is a physical tube and valve and has complications like any medical device. When doctors perform ETV (Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy) they cut a little hole in the brain so the fluid can drain out in a more natural fashion. Each procedure has plusses and minusses although my guess is that ETV will eventually become the standard treatment once they perfect it.
The study found that there was a difference between the patients with ETV and those with shunts. In most areas the ETV people had higher function although in some areas (I can’t remember which) the shunt people did better. This was a very limited study - they were able to find only 6 ETV people to participate - so they aren’t drawing any strong conclusions to it.
I don’t know if I’ll do daily updates while we are here. It just depends on how busy we get.
As for Maria herself, she has been doing great lately. She’s growing more interactive and aware. Her therapists have noticed it and are very excited about it. I don’t know if it’s the Jin Shin Jyutsu but it seems to have started about the time the treatment did.