Letter to the editor: Addressing radiological terminology of basal ganglia and thalamic injury in hypoxic ischaemic injury.

Abstract

I refer to the pictorial review by Misser et al. on the correlation of the pathophysiology and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) patterns in children with HIBI that appeared in the South African Journal of Radiology (SAJR) in October 2020.1 In this article, the authors classify MRI patterns and ascribe pathogenetic mechanisms to each. They refer to classic bilateral hypoxic ischaemic insults of the posterior putamina and ventrolateral thalami as an ‘acute profound pattern’1 and specify that the description of acute profound injury links this particular diagnosis with sentinel events, which include ruptured uterus, abruption of the placenta and prolapsed cord.2,3,4 A large number of cases with the BGT injury pattern have no record of having suffered a sentinel event; that is, naming these as an acute profound hypoxic ischaemic injury is inappropriate.