Quote:
Originally Posted by pogo
Do you have chronic problems due to slit ventricles? Some people are quite stable even though their ventricles are slit on imaging. My daughter has slit ventricles and her pressures are slowly increasing, she over drains and has poor elasticity so we manage that by upgrading the shunt system (no asd at one point due to serious under draining and low pressure, later needing asd, then replace asd with low flow valve when that wasn't enough along with increasing the settings on her programmable valve as she can withstand it). I also don't allow the surgeons to forget that she has already not had enlarged ventricles at the time of a shunt obstruction so they don't depend on imaging but look at her symptoms. We also keep an eye on hydration as it doesn't take much to throw her system out of balance.
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I don't have any real problems as a result of being slits. Occasionally I'll need to be reprogrammed if its overdraining. My NS had attempted to enlarge them slightly two years ago because he worried that they may be too small, but I just didn't react well to it. So in his words, we're just going to let them be slits for now. I had a shunt failure 6 weeks ago, so I'm just trying to be extra vigilant as far as warning signs. By the time I got to the ER, the CT showed ventricles that my surgeon considered "massive if they were from someone who already had normal sized ventricles." Given that mine are slits he called it a "near catastrophic enlargement." But my most recent images shoe that they're back to slits.