Cerebrovascular disease in childhood: neuropsychological investigation of 14 cases

Abstract

There are few studies about the development of a child after a cerebrovascular accident (CVA), and they usually describe problems such as diminishing in intellectual capacities, difficulties in linguistic and visual-motor skills, as well as in spatial organization and integration. In this study, there were 28 children participating, being 14 placed in the experimental group (EG) after clinical diagnosis and ischemic CVA imaging, and other 14 children without past history of CVA, who formed the control group (CG). The neuropsychological research protocol included an intelligence test, a visual-motor coordination test, human figure drawing, a cortical functions battery and the medical records of the children from the EG. The analysis of the results of this study revealed that the best performances after the CVA are related to the shortest time of functional recovery; CG presented better performances than EG in all the instruments used, in cognitive, perceptual and motor skills. It has been noticed that CVA may lead to intellectual reduction in case of a recurrence of the vascular insult.