Small pneumoencephalograms as a screening procedure in the study of convulsive disorders.

Abstract

CONVULSIVE disorders for definitive diagnosis account for a large number of admissions to the neuropsychiatric hospital from which this report comes. Seizures, whether of the grand mal, petit mal, psychomotor or jacksonian type, may be due to a variety of causes, as expanding lesions such as neoplasms, chronic abscesses, subdural hematomata, cerebral scars resulting from trauma, arachnoiditis from infection, and local cerebral atrophy and cysts. These scars may have resulted from compression ischemia or infection or may be on a congenital basis. Diffuse cerebrovascular disease such as arteriosclerosis and syphilis may also be causative. Age grouping in a hospital or institution has a considerable effect on the type of lesion one is apt to encounter. Since most of our patients are male veterans in the twenty-to-forty-year bracket, neoplasms, cerebral scars from trauma or infection, and cerebral or cortical atrophy are the more frequent findings. On account of these possibilities, it is obvious that an accu...