Lizard has answered pretty comprehensively as always, but I'll give my input anyway

She's right in that the oldest person with congenital hydrocephalus would be in their 50's but there are people older with shunts who have developed hydrocephalus later in life due to tumours, head injuries etc.

I was born 6 weeks premature in 1966, so I've had hydrocephalus for almost 42 years, and have had only 4 shunts in that time.

The shunted hydrocephalus only affects me in that I've got absolutely no sense of direction, my short term memory is awful and my concentration can be poor at times.

However, I got good exam results and work as a web developer for the Government, so I don't think my condition has held me back too much.

Having said that, I've no idea if my faculties would be worse if I'd had more operations.

I don't drive, maybe because I'm worried about my poor concentration, but probably more related to the anxiety disorder I've suffered from for 30 years. This condition may or may not be attributable to the shunt revisions / trauma during childhood.

So there's no evidence of a reduced lifespan, because there is no data to support it (given that the eldest of us with congenital hydro is in their 50's).

Of course any invasive surgery in the brain carries some risk, and the time before a shunt revision (when the intracranial pressure is high) can cause some loss of brain cells, but there's no way of saying how much damage is done, it purely has to be assessed on an individual basis.

In England we only got shunts in the sixties, and even then there were only 2 hospitals in the entire country that could carry out the operation.

So I feel pretty lucky to be here at all, to be honest.

Mark