After 5 years or more of strange little things happening with my wife she was diagnosed with NPH shortly after Christmas. Apparently NPH is one strand of dementia that can be reversed, however I'm pretty sure that the diagnosis is too late to make any impact.
The symptoms of NPH are: incontinence, difficulty in walking and memory loss. These alone are insufficient to diagnose but can be confirmed with a CT scan. The CT scan will show the ventricles (the empty spaces) of the brain filled up with cerebrospinal fluid, which then attacks the brain cells.
The first stage to confirm NPH is where a memory test is conducted (I think its called an MMMA test), then the patients walking is tested, whereby they have to walk over a certain distance in a certain time. Both tests are recorded.
The next step is for the person to go into hospital for a spinal tap to be inserted and the cerebrospinal fluid to be drained over a period of 3 days. After this, the above tests are repeated and if there is an improvement, an operation will be performed where a drain (shunt?) is fitted into the brain and its outlet goes into the stomach where the fluid will naturally disperse.
My wife has completed stage 1 and will be operated on in October, however her symptoms have increased tenfold since she came out of hospital - her walking is awful, incontinence is much worse and her memory is worse, too. It seems as though once the fluid was drained from her brain that a tidal wave of fluid has rushed in to fill the empty ventricles, thereby making her symptoms much worse.
The question is, if the operation fails, where do we go from here? Anybody with the same problem with their OH?
The symptoms of NPH are: incontinence, difficulty in walking and memory loss. These alone are insufficient to diagnose but can be confirmed with a CT scan. The CT scan will show the ventricles (the empty spaces) of the brain filled up with cerebrospinal fluid, which then attacks the brain cells.
The first stage to confirm NPH is where a memory test is conducted (I think its called an MMMA test), then the patients walking is tested, whereby they have to walk over a certain distance in a certain time. Both tests are recorded.
The next step is for the person to go into hospital for a spinal tap to be inserted and the cerebrospinal fluid to be drained over a period of 3 days. After this, the above tests are repeated and if there is an improvement, an operation will be performed where a drain (shunt?) is fitted into the brain and its outlet goes into the stomach where the fluid will naturally disperse.
My wife has completed stage 1 and will be operated on in October, however her symptoms have increased tenfold since she came out of hospital - her walking is awful, incontinence is much worse and her memory is worse, too. It seems as though once the fluid was drained from her brain that a tidal wave of fluid has rushed in to fill the empty ventricles, thereby making her symptoms much worse.
The question is, if the operation fails, where do we go from here? Anybody with the same problem with their OH?
