Active clinical trials for "Hydrocephalus"

The Researchers are trying to test a MR imaging method for detection of Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) flow in the brain to help diagnosis and better understand diseases that affect brain function.

Two treatment options exist for infant patients with hydrocephalus. Most patients are treated with a surgical procedure in which a shunt is inserted into the brain and abdomen. In recent years, however, another treatment has developed called Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy (ETV) with Choroid Plexus Cauterization (ETV/CPC).This research study is being done to measure the results of these procedures in children less than six months of age who have hydrocephalus as the result of a brain infection, called post-infectious hydrocephalus, or PIH. This study will evaluate patients in more detail to measure brain growth and development.

Participants with known or suspected hydrocephalus will receive brain scans using the Hyperfine, low field strength, portable, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system in addition to their scheduled outpatient standard of care clinical computed tomography (CT) or MRI scan. The purpose of this pilot study is to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of using the Hyperfine system in an outpatient setting and to compare its diagnostic performance to standard clinical imaging. Outpatients with other known or suspected neurological disorders or conditions prompting routine clinical brain imaging with MRI or CT will also be enrolled and the diagnostic performance of low field scans compared to that of the same day standard of care clinical imaging.

This study is to prospectively compare Ultrasound guided (US-G) Ventriculoperitoneal Shunt (VPS) placement to stereotactic navigation in a randomized controlled fashion with the surgical intervention time as primary outcome. All patients entering the University Hospital of Basel for elective or emergent VPS surgery will be randomized in 1:1 fashion to one of the study groups at admission or the day before the operation.

The length of prophylactic antibiotic use with antibiotic impregnated External Ventricular Drains (EVD)s is unknown. This study is a randomized clinical trial with two arms: twenty four hours of prophylactic antibiotic use or prophylactic antibiotic use for entire duration of EVD

Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is a neurodegenerative disease of unclear etiology characterized by a clinical trias named after the neurosurgeon Hakim. It includes cognitive impairment (dementia), gait disturbance, and urinary incontinence. These symptoms, which frequently occur in the elderly population, often overlap with the symptoms of "other" neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer's disease and other (pre)senile dementias. To distinguishing NPH from "other" dementias is crucial in determining whether a patient will benefit from a surgical procedure (ventriculoperitoneal shunt placement) or not. At the same time, the options for assessing the patient's condition's progression and distinguishing between the progression of neurodegeneration in a broader sense or malfunction of the drainage system are very limited. Therefore, the role of a biomarker that could meet these expectations mentioned above is highly desirable.

INPH is a chronic, progressive disease characterised by enlarged ventricles in the absence of elevated intracranial pressure. Patients often present with the Hakim triad comprising gait disturbance, dementia and urinary incontinence. Treatment consists of ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunting reducing the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume in the central nervous system (CNS); a generally safe and well tolerated procedure nevertheless invasive in nature and associated with surgical risk. The currently used diagnostic algorithms to predict surgery outcome by testing patients before and after a diagnostic spinal tap temporarily reducing the CSF volume in the CNS are of wide variability and limited validity. Developing measures to accurately diagnose and select patients for intervention is thus of great importance. The objective of this study is to define and validate a diagnostic algorithm for the selection of patients with symptoms compatible with iNPH for shunt surgery.

In all published series of adult chronic hydrocephalus, there is a percentage between twenty and twenty-five percent of patients who present poor results after implantation of a cerebrospinal fluid shunt,1-11 usually ventriculoperitoneal. The lumboperitoneal shunt is also used but much more rarely. The diagnosis of this pathology is based on the clinical picture, neuroimaging studies (Evans index and corpus callosum angle), cerebrospinal fluid dynamics tests (Katzman test), and invasive intracranial pressure measurements. Despite all this diagnostic arsenal, there is a high percentage of patients (mentioned above) in which treatment by diversion of cerebrospinal fluid does not offer the expected results. Traditionally this has been attributed to chronic adult hydrocephalus being associated with other types of dementia. This may be the case in some patients, and it would be important to be able to predict which patients will not improve or who will improve poorly in the case of implantation of a cerebrospinal fluid shunt.

As elaborated above only one study reported ultrasonographic changes of the width of the lateral ventricle during clamping of EVD/LD and indicated that ultrasound monitoring might be suitable. No firm data exists about the change of the width of the third ventricle, the diameter of the optic nerve or brain perfusion during clamping of the EVD/LD, although the width of these structures has been shown to depend on intracranial pressure. Ultrasonographic measurements of changes of the width of the third ventricle or the diameter of the optic nerve would have some advantages compared to the ultrasonographic assessments of the lateral ventricles. First, the width of the third ventricle can be measured easier and more reliable than the width of the lateral ventricles (better defined insonation plane and therefore higher repeatability of measurements) 3. Second, whereas assessments of the width of the side and third ventricles with ultrasound depend on the temporal bone windows (10 to 15% of patients have insufficient temporal bone windows), the measurement of the diameter of the optic nerve does not have this limitation and can therefore be performed in almost all patients. Hence, measurement of the diameter of the optic nerve would allow to overcome one major limitation of transcranial ultrasound. The latter limitation for transcranial ultrasound could also be minimized by the use of an ultrasound contrast agent (SonoVue®), but this was also not yet studied. The use of an ultrasound contrast agent would in addition allow to study changes of brain perfusion during clamping of EVD/LD.

The SAPPHYRE study is an ambispective (retrospective and prospective) PMCF study with the objective to evaluate the safety and performance of the Polaris® 24 adjustable valve system in the treatment of 126 patients with hydrocephalus.