Surgical treatment of infantile hydrocephalus.

The operation of endoscopic coagulation of the choroid plexuses for the relief of infantile hydrocephalus is now 18 years old. Nearly a hundred cases have been reported and the indications and procedure are well standardized. Several patients have grown up apparently normally from the earliest series of operations. In a recent series of 20 operations performed on ten patients in the past ten years, there have been no deaths attributable to the procedure. The operation has substantially decreased the pressure in all cases, and has brought it within normal limits in all cases in which it was performed before the head became grossly enlarged. The mentality has improved following relief of pressure in all cases. When the operation was performed before deterioration began, the results were uniformly excellent.