Clinical Utility of $^{99m}Tc-HMPAO$ Brain SPECT Findings in Chronic Head Injury

만성 두부외상 환자에서 $^{99m}Tc-HMPAO$ Brain SPECT의 임상적 유용성

Minimal deterioration of cerebral perfusion or microanatomical changes were undetectable on conventional Brain CT or MRI. So evaluation of focal functional changes of the brain parenchyme is essential in chronic head injury patients, who did not show focal anatomical changes on these radiological studies. However, the patients who had longstanding neurologic sequelae following head injury, there had been no available imaging modalities for evaluating these patients precisely. Therefore we tried to detect the focal functional changes on the brain parenchyme using $^{99m}Tc-HMPAO$ Brain SPECT on the patients of chronic head injuries. Twenty three patients who had suffered from headache, memory dysfunction, personality change and insomnia lasting more than six months fellowing head injury were included in our cases, which showed no anatomical abnormalities on Brain CT or MRI. At first they underwent psychological test whether the symptoms were organic or not. Also we were able to evaluate the cerebral perfusion changes with $^{99m}Tc-HMPAO$ Brain SPECT in 22 patients among the 23, which five patients were focal and 17 patients were nonfocally diffuse perfusion changes. Thus we can predict the perfusion changes such as local vascular deterioration or functional defects using $^{99m}Tc-HMPAO$ Brain SPECT in the patients who had suffered from post-traumatic sequelae, which changes were undetectable on Brain CT or MRI.