Korean J Nucl Med.  2003 Aug;37(4):229-234.

The Clinical Usefulness of Tc-99m ECD Brain SPECT in Acute Measles Encephalitis

• Lim ST
• Sohn MH

Abstract

PURPOSE
Since the prognosis of measles encephalitis is poor, early diagnosis and proper management are very important to improve clinical outcomes. We compared Tc-99m ECD brain SPECT (SPECT) with MR imaging (MRI) for the detection of acute measles encephalitis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Eleven patients (M: F=4: 7, age range 18 months-14 yrs) with acute measles encephalitis were enrolled in this studies. All of them underwent both MRI and SPECT. The results of SPECT were scored from 0 (normal) to 3 (most severe defect) according to perfusion state. We compared two image modalities for the detection of brain abnormality in acute measles encephalitis. RESULTS: Seven of 11 patients (63.6%) revealed high signal intensity in the white matter on T2WI of MRI, on the other hand all patients (100%) showed hypoperfusion on SPECT. Severe perfusion deficits above score 2 were located with decreasing frequencies in the frontal lobe (81.8%), temporal lobe (72.7%), occipital lobe (27.3%), basal ganglia (27.3%), and parietal lobe (9.1%). CONCLUSION: We conclude that SPECT is more useful than MRI for the detection of brain involvement in patients with acute measles encephalitis.

Keyword

Acute measles encephalitis; brain SPECT; Tc-99m ECD

MeSH Terms

Basal Ganglia
Brain*
Early Diagnosis
Encephalitis*
Frontal Lobe
Hand
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Measles*
Occipital Lobe
Parietal Lobe
Perfusion
Prognosis
Temporal Lobe
Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon*