Clinical Analysis Of 59 Thalamic Infarction Patients

Introduction:As all of us known,the incidence,mortality and disability rate of the CD(cerebrovascular disease) is high.In recent years,epidemiological data in China shows that CD ranks the first or second in the cause of human death.The number of national stroke patients as new hair each yeais is about two million.There are about one point five million patients died because of CD.Because of sequelae,part of those with CD alive can not live normally.So besides effective therapy,active prevention of CD is the same important.The prevention of CD includes primary prevention and secondary prevention.But in our country because the compliance of primary prevention in patients with CD is poor,therefore the treatment of secondary prevention is particularly important. The secondary prevention,particularly in relation to vertebral - basilar system, looking for one vascular disease can be used as the marker of this system and has better prognosis is even more important.Four of the five main arteries supplying thalamus are from posterior circulation.Pure thalamic infarction is distinct picture that accurately predicts a small artery disease of the posterior circulation.Furthermore,thalamic infarction appears to predict an overall good clinical recovery and to be a marker for cerebral small artery disease.Aim:Our purpose in this study was to evaluate and review the onset age,risk factors,neuropsychologic abnormalities,clinical profiles,and prognosis in patients with pure thalamic infarctions and through early diagnosis of thalamic infarction through CT or MRI to provide a clinical picture as the secondary prevention of CD.Method:We chose 59 patients of pure thalamic infarction admitted to our hospital from April 2008 to Feb 2009(34 male and 25 female).They are between 35 to 85 years old,mean age,57.4 years.All cases are conformed with the rules of CD diagnosis from Chinese Neural Science in 1995 and confirmed by head CT or MRI as the pure thalamus infarction.The patients were divided according to age into two groups:young(＜45 years)or middle and old age(≥45 years) for analyzing risk factors of patients with thalamic infarcts.With help of CT or MRI the clinical characteristics of patients with thalamic infarcts were analyzed according to tha four topographic subtypes.Conclusion:The onset age of pure thalamic infarction middle-aged and elderly (62.7%between 46 and 65 years),mean age,57.4 years.The main causes of thalamic infarction are hypertension and atherosclerosis(56%) and smoking (11.9%).The main risk factors in middle and old age group were hypertension and atherosclerosis(59.6%),in young group the main risk factors were smoking (71.4%).The foru topographic subtypes of thalamic infarcts were 34 lateral,11 anterior,8 medial,6 posterior respectively.,and their main clinical features were sensorirnotor deficits(lateral type),hypothalamus language(anterior type),altered level of consciousness(medial type),middle and transient sensor deficits(posterior type).Thalamic infarction can be diagnosed by MRI.Acute thalamic infarction appears to predict an overall good clinical recovery,cure rate (33.9%),recovery rate(50.8%),no death.