Prenatal Diagnosis of Atretic Occipital Cephalocele: A Case Report

Abstract

Atretic cephaloceles refer to the congenital herniation of meningeal and vestigial tissues such as arachnoid, glial or neural rests. These small, skin covered subscalp lesions usually appear within a few centimetres of the lambda and nearly half of them have a parietal situation, the remaining half have occipital, parieto-occipital, frontal, asterion, and sincipital locations. Atretic cephaloceles can be isolated or associated with congenital syndromes, agenesis of corpus callosum, grey matter heterotopias, ventriculomegaly, mental retardation, developmental delay, epilepsy, spasticity, speech difficulty, strabismus, optic nerve atrophy, microphthalmia, enophthalmos, cleft palate, hypertelorism, congenital cardiac and vascular defects, renal agenesis, hearing problems, congenital lobar emphysema, and muscular anomalies. This case report describes a newborn which has been diagnosed with atretic occipital cephalocele prenatally and also bilateral cochlear hypoplasia postnatally.