[Colpocephaly: report of a case].

Abstract

A 43-year-old G12P4 mother delivered, at 35 weeks of gestation, a girl with a birth weight of 1980 g. Since her last pregnancy 20 years ago, she had had 8 subsequent abortions. Amniocentesis was done at the 18th week of gestation and revealed negative findings. Because of maternal age, the baby was delivered by cesarean section. The family history was not pertinent. After birth, the baby was noted to have a large head girth (34.5 cm) with widened anterior fontanel and mild frontal protrusion. The neurosonography showed symmetric dilatation of the frontal horns and temporal horns of the lateral ventricles, hyperechodensity in the periventricular wall, absence of corpus callosum and cavum septum pellucidum, and a large communicating pear-shaped ventricular cavity on the posterior coronal view. The brain CT scan demonstrated evidence of extreme dilatation of the occipital horns of the lateral ventricles and prominence of the subarachnoid spaces in the supra-Sylvian fissures. Based on these findings, the baby was diagnosed as a case of colpocephaly. Patients with colpocephaly usually have moderate to severe mental retardation, motor deficits, visual abnormalities and seizures. They need speech and physical therapies as early as possible. Therefore, if early diagnosis is confirmed by fetal sonography before the 5th month of gestation, this congenital brain malformation can be prevented by therapeutic abortion.