Early Complications of Ventriculoperitoneal Shunt in Pediatric Patients With Hydrocephalus

Objective Ventriculoperitoneal shunt (VPS) is the most commonly used procedure for the treatment of hydrocephalus (HDC), especially in children. However, this is prone to many complications, and requires repeated surgeries, which as such increases the morbidity of the patients. It is estimated that majority of the complications occurs in the immediate post-operative period and the rate of complications decreases over the time, with no impunity to these, though. We conducted this study to know about the complications of VPS in the early post-operative period, in pediatric patients with hydrocephalus. Materials and methods This descriptive study was conducted in the Department of Neurosurgery, Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar, between June 2019 and January 2020 (seven months). All patients with hydrocephalus below 12 years of age, operated for the first time were included after taking an informed consent, while those with repeated shunt procedures and elderly patients requiring shunt were excluded from the study. Patients' details like age, gender, location, contact number, cause of hydrocephalus, date of shunt placement, type of surgery (elective or emergency) and any follow-up complications like failure, erosion, infections, ileus were noted on a predesigned proforma. After the surgery, patients were followed for a period of one month, and contacted either through the telephone or asked to visit in the outpatients on the specified days, and were evaluated for any shunt-related complications, and any of these complications suspected were further evaluated and noted. The data was analyzed using the statistical program SPSS version 19 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Results are presented in the form of charts, tables and graph. Results During the study period, we evaluated a total of 151 patients; there were 78 (51.65%) males and 73 (48.34%) females with a male to female ratio approaching 1.1:1. The age range was from 22 days to 12 years. The mean age was 38.46 ± 7.53 months. The primary indications for the insertion of VP shunt were: congenital hydrocephalus in 70 (46.4%), post infectious hydrocephalus in 57 (37.7%), hydrocephalus due to tumor in 22 (14.6%), and post traumatic hydrocephalus in two (1.4%) patients. Among the total number of patients, 85 patients (55.6%) were done as elective cases and 66 patients (44.4%) were done as emergency cases. Complications were encountered in 30 patients (19.87%) during the follow-up of 30 days. Complications occurred between day 1 and day 20 of follow-up with a mean of 9.10 ± 1.69 2SD days. Conclusion VP shunt is the most widely used treatment for HDC, but is predisposed to complications and almost every fifth case of VP shunt comes across with complications. Shunt blockage, infections and abdominal wound-related complications are common earlier complications in pediatric patients with hydrocephalus.