Abstract

Objective: To investigate the abnormalities detected in patients with acute atypical stroke symptoms in the emergency department and to determine the relationship between clinical and abnormal neuroimaging findings.

Material and Methods: The study was approved by the local ethics committee. We retrospectively reviewed the medical and imaging records of 117 consecutive patients (male/female=51/66; mean age±standard deviation=10.9±4.8 years) who had brain computed tomography (CT) and/or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between January 2016 and January 2018. Categorical and numerical variables were analyzed by Chi-square, Fisher’s exact, t-tests and logistic regression analysis was performed.

Results: The most common complaints were headache (25.6%), vomiting (19.6%), and confusion (17.9%). 20.5% of the patients had clinical-related comorbidities such as vasculopathy, congenital afibrinogenemia, 39.3% had abnormal neurological examination findings, and 35% had abnormal neuroimaging findings. In 12 patients, a disorder requiring urgent treatment was detected based on their clinical features, laboratory and neuroimaging findings. (acute arterial ischemic stroke [n=1], dural sinus thrombosis [n=1], neoplasia [n=3], meningitis [n=3], and encephalitis [n=4]). There were statistically significant correlations between the presence of comorbdities, confusion, abnormal neurological examination and neuroimaging findings (p=0.045). In predicting abnormal neuroimaging findings in logistic regression analysis, confusion and abnormal neurological examination findings were found to be significant (p=0.006). Abnormal findings detected by MRI (45.2%) were significantly higher than CT (17.1%) (p<0.001).

Conclusion: The disorders other than stroke were more frequent in patients with acute atypical stroke like complaints than the stroke. In patients with a history of clinical-related comorbidities, confusion and abnormal neurological examinations, abnormal neuroimaging findings were more frequent.

Keywords: Computed tomography, Magnetic resonance imaging, Stroke

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Copyright and license

Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

1.
Güneş A, Cebeci D, Hanalioğlu D. Neuroimaging Findings in Children with Acute Atypical Stroke Symptoms. Turk J Pediatr Dis [Internet]. 2019 Jul. 30 [cited 2025 Aug. 23];13(4):246-51. Available from: https://turkjpediatrdis.org/article/view/588