Six cases of deep cerebral veins thrombosis / 中华神经科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To analyse the clinical features,imaging characteristics diversity of deep cerebral veins thrombosis (DCVT).Methods From 2004 to 2013,6 patients diagnosed as DCVT were recorded and a retrospective review of the cases were undertaken for the purpose of this analysis.Results Among the 6 patients with DCVT,4 were male and 2 were female,aged from 28 to 69 years old.The disease duration of 4 cases ranged from 2 to 7 days,remnants were 20 days and 3 months respectively.The first symptoms of 4 cases were headache,1 was feeblemindedness,and the other was hemiplegia.The secondary symptoms were disturbance of consciousness,apathy,diplopia and non-infectious fever.Non-contrast computed tomography showed low signal in the bilateral thalamus in four patients,high signal in the transverse sinus and straight sinus in one patient and high signal in torcular in one patient.Abnormal signal was found in bilateral thalamus on magnetic resonance imaging in all patients and some of them had abnormal signal in the mesencephalon or basal ganglia.The patients were definitely diagnosed as DCVT by magnetic resonance venography (MRV) or digital subtraction angiography (DSA).Among them,2 patients were confirmed by brain biopsy.Four patients were followed up with good outcome and 2 were lost to follow-up.Conclusions The clinical manifestations of DCVT are not specific.For acute-onset DCVT patients,the first symptoms are always headache and vomiting,while the main symptoms are declined cognition and slow reaction for chronic-onset ones.Along with the progress,the main symptoms of DCVT are disturbance of consciousness,psychiatric symptoms and intracranial hypertension.Changes in the bilateral thalamus and basal ganglia are especially main characteristics which are easily misdiagnosed as brain tumor according to the images.DCVT can be definitely diagnosed by no signal of deep cerebral veins on MRV or DSA.