Echo-Encephalography in the Diagnosis of Ventricular Dilatation

Abstract

The possibility of obtaining ultrasonic reflections from the ventricular walls which Leksell suspected in 1955 and de Vlieger and Ridder, as well as Gordon demonstrated in 1959 on the third ventricle, thereby measuring the width of the ventricles, has decisively enhanced the informative value of echo-encephalography. Only through this possibility has the cranio-cerebral ultrasonic examination become echo-encephalography. This progress in diagnosis concerns dilatations of the ventricular system most of all. Since Lithander’s first report in 1961 on cases of infantile hydrocephalus where echoes could be registered from the walls of the third and lateral ventricles, similar findings have been observed in adults, according to the publications of Schiefer, Kazner and Brückner (1963) as well as of Ambrose (1964), Ford (1966), Geletneky (1965), Sjögren (1965), Uematsu (1966), Umbach and Kley (1965), some of whom showed larger series.