Third ventriculostomy in infants younger than 1 year old.

Background: Endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) gains more attention each day in the treatment of hydrocephalus. Some authors have questioned the effectiveness of the procedure for the treatment of infants younger than 1 year. More recent studies revealed that the effectiveness of the procedure is more related to the etiology of the disease than to the age of the patient.

Methods: We studied retrospectively the effectiveness of third ventriculostomy in our service: 75 endoscopic procedures, from which 48 were ETVs. Among the ETVs, 30 were used to treat aqueductal stenosis, three for Dandy-Walker, eight for Chiari type II.

Results: When the patients were stratified by the etiology of the hydrocephalus, there was a statistically significant difference among the groups studied with higher success among patients with aqueductal stenosis the (90 %) and lower for the treatment of Chiari II-related hydrocephalus (50 % of success). With the patients stratified by age groups, there was no significant difference in terms of the success of the treatment.

Conclusions: Our results have shown that the effectiveness of ETV is not actually age-related, but etiology-related.