Acute decompensation of chronic hydrocephalus following elective abdominal surgery presenting as paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity: illustrative case
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The management of asymptomatic untreated chronic hydrocephalus in adults remains controversial. Acute deterioration is uncommon. However, decompensation of stable patients has been described following trauma, physical activity, medical procedures, or Valsalva maneuvers. The authors report a case of acute decompensation after elective abdominal surgery in an adult with chronic hydrocephalus with an unusual clinical presentation of paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity. OBSERVATIONS: The decompensation manifested as episodes of paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity associated with features of dorsal midbrain impairment. The patient presented with transient episodes of decreased level of consciousness, tachycardia, hypertension, flushing, and sweating. He had upgaze restriction, lack of convergence, and pupillary dilatation, and his pupils were unresponsive to light. There was no structural change on brain imaging. The sympathetic hyperactivity and oculomotor abnormalities resolved with CSF diversion, and the patient made a complete neurological recovery. LESSONS: Patients with chronic untreated hydrocephalus can decompensate due to increased physiological stress. Adult patients with untreated chronic hydrocephalus should be counseled about this possibility and evaluated carefully by a multidisciplinary team before consenting to major elective surgery. The presentation of acute decompensation can include paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity, which should be diagnosed and treated urgently, even if there is no radiological evidence of ventricular change. https://thejns.org/doi/10.3171/CASE2547.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".