Abstract: Childhood strokes are not so rare as once thought and its incidence
is equal to pediatric brain tumors. The recent advent of more accurate
diagnostic techniques has lead to a surge of interest, which may lead in the
near future to strategies for treatment and prevention. We retrospectively
analyzed the prevalence of first episode of arterial stroke in children. This
study was conducted in a private tertiary care hospital for children from June
2002 to May 2004 involving 12 children with first episode of arterial stroke
out of 23,125 admissions. Majority (42%) of the children was between 1 month
and 5 years and hemiplegia/hemiparesis was the common clinical presentation.
Ten children had infarct and two had hemorrhage. The causes identified after
detailed investigations were tetralogy of Fallot (2), protein C deficiency (1),
homocystinuria (1), nonspecific vasculitis (1), hypercholesterolemia (1),
factor XIII deficiency (1), late hemorrhagic disease of the newborn (1) and
idiopathic (4). All the children recovered though some had neurological deficit
and there was no mortality. Ischemic stroke was more common than hemorrhagic
stroke. Prognosis of pediatric stroke is good and the treatment is largely
supportive.
