Computed tomographic findings in children with spastic diplegia: correlation with the severity of their motor abnormality.

Computed tomographic findings of 46 children with spastic diplegia examined at nine months to three years of age corrected for preterm births were analyzed. Both the size of the lateral ventricles measured by the width of the anterior horns, and the volume of the extracerebral low-density areas were enlarged in some patients. Both enlargements did not, however, correlate to the severity of the motor abnormality in the patients. The low-density areas of the periventricular white matter, especially adjacent to the trigone, were reduced in many children, probably due to the atrophy of the cerebral white matter having periventricular leukomalacia. The anterior expansion of the white matter reduction from the trigone corresponded to the severe motor abnormality in the children with spastic diplegia.