Affiliations: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Taegu, Republic of Korea
Correspondence:
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Address for correspondence: Sung Ho Jang, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University 317-1, Daemyungdong, Namku, Taegu, 705-717, Republic of Korea. Tel.: +82 53 620 3269; Fax: +82 53 620 3508; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Objectives:Little is known about neural recovery of an injured cingulum following brain injury. We report on a patient with brain injury who showed apparent neural recovery of an injured cingulum on follow up diffusion tensor tractography (DTT). Methods:A 53-year-old female patient had suffered hypoxic ischemic brain injury for a period of approximately nine hours following spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage and intraventricular hemorrhage, and underwent coiling of a left ruptured aneurysm of the posterior communicating artery. She showed severe cognitive impairment, so that she could not be evaluated on the Mini-Mental State Examination, however, her cognition showed improvement to 21 at five months after onset and 24 at 14 months after onset on the Mini-Mental State Examination. Results:On seven-day DTT for the fornix in the patient, we observed a discontinuation in the left crus and thinning of the right crus. However, on 14-month DTT, the thinned right fornical crus had disappeared. Regarding the cingulum, on seven-day DTTs, discontinuations of both cingulums anterior to the genu of the corpus callosum were observed. However, on 14-month follow up DTT, the right cingulum was elongated to the right basal forebrain and no change in the discontinuation of the left cingulum was observed. Conclusions:These changes observed on DTT in both cingulums appeared to indicate recovery of the injured cingulum in this patient. The results of this study may suggest a mechanism for recovery of injured cingulum following brain injury.
