Rasmussen's encephalitis: the relevance of neuropsychological assessment in patient's treatment and follow up

Abstract

Rasmussen's encephalitis is characterized by refractory epilepsy, neurological deterioration and progressive atrophy of one cerebral hemisphere. The objective of this study is to describe the importance of neuropsychological evaluation in the treatment decision and follow-up of patients with Rasmussen´s encephalitis. Neuropsychological assessment was performed in two steps. Firstly, the clinical history was obtained and the Vineland adaptative behavior scale (VABS) was applied. After this first step, the patients with social maturity level equal or higher than the inferior limit underwent a battery of neuropsychological assessment. We evaluated three patients before any specific treatment was started, and six months after the intervention (surgery or plasmapheresis). Patient 1 underwent left hemispherectomy and had global improvement on second neuropsychological assessment. This suggests that the decision of performing surgery was adequate. Patients 2 and 3 underwent plasmapheresis. They did not present cognitive decline between both evaluations which suggest that our decision of postponing surgery was adequate as well. We conclude that neuropsychological assessment is important when evaluating patients with Rasmussen´s encephalitis. That is especially true for patients in whom disease progression is slow, and surgery timing has to be carefully planned.

Keywords

• Rasmussen's encephalitis
• neuropsychological assessment
• epilepsy
• childhood