Clinical and neuroimage characteristics of reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome in elderly patients / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the clinical and neuroimage characteristics of reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome (RPLS) in Chinese elderly patients. Methods The characteristic clinical presentation and neuroimaging of 5 elderly patients with RPLS were retrospectively analyzed. Results There were one male and four females in this study, with the average age of (63.0±2.4) years, all combined with hypertension. The most common clinical presentations were abnormality of visual perception (5 cases), headache (4 cases), epileptic seizure (4 cases), disturbance of consciousness (3 cases), pathological reflex (2 cases) and hemiplegia (2 cases). CT scan showed 4 cases with low density lesions. MR1 scan showed 5 cases with occipital lobe lesions, 2 with parietal lobe lesions and 1 with temporal lobe lesions. Re-examination of CT scans showed that 4 survived patients became normal at mean (48.8±29.2) days after discharging from hospital. Conclusions The etiologies of RPLS are diverse. The vasogenic theory is supported by neuroimage of RPLS. Neuroimage may be very important for the diagnosis of RPLS. Diffusion-weighted imaging and apparent diffusion coefficient map may be helpful for differential diagnosis between RPLS and cerebral infarct.