What Are The Symptoms Of Periventricular Leukomalacia?

Low Heart Rate

Individuals with periventricular leukomalacia may experience a low heart rate (bradycardia) due to the underlying damage done to the white matter tissues in their brain. This symptom typically occurs early on in the disease process because it can also be part of the causative action that produces periventricular leukomalacia. Periventricular leukomalacia happens due to a brain injury that causes the tissues in the brain to become deprived of blood and oxygen in the time before, during, or after the individual's birth. The mechanism by which caused the ischemic injury to the brain may have influenced the ability of the heart to pump blood effectively to the brain. In other cases, the injury happens as the result of a noncardiac related mechanism but produces bradycardia episodes due to a natural compensative process. The body naturally has certain programmed mechanisms that are activated when things go wrong in the body. One of these autoregulatory mechanisms involves increasing the flow of blood to the brain at the expense of the muscle tissues, including those of the heart. This autoregulatory mechanism can be inappropriately triggered in perventricular leukomalacia patients, resulting in episodes of low heart rate.

Read more about the major symptoms of periventricular leukomalacia now.

Visual Impairment And Eye Conditions

An individual who experiences visual impairment and eye conditions may be affected by periventricular leukomalacia. The leading cause of visual dysfunction and impairment in children who are born prematurely is periventricular leukomalacia. The visual impairments are best characterized by visual maturation delay, abnormal visual acuity, defects in the visual field, crowding, and visual perceptual-cognitive problems. Visual perception delay defines a child who is unable to follow or fix objects with their eyes in the space around them but usually exhibits an improvement before reaching six months old. Abnormal visual acuity defines when an affected individual has an alteration in what would be the normal sharpness of their vision. An individual who has defects in their visual field has a small spot of blindness within the normal visual field of one or both of their eyes. An affected individual may experience an inability to identify or recognize single objects when they are placed in an environment of general clutter, which is a defect referred to as crowding. A periventricular leukomalacia patient may have problems with visual perceptual cognition, or an inability to properly locate and extract visual information from the space around them.

Keep reading to learn more about the symptoms of periventricula leukomalacia now.