"Survey of Wellbeing of Young Children (SWYC)": how does it fit for screening developmental delay in Brazilian children aged 4 to 58 months?

OBJECTIVE: To replicate the original normative study of the SWYC's Milestones Questionnaires for children in Brazil. Our goals were to compare the performance of Brazilian and North American children using this screening tool and to verify the reliability and validity of the Brazilian version. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional study with children aged 1-65 months and their guardians, recruited in southern Brazil. Parents were interviewed using the Developmental Milestones questionnaire, which contains 10 questions about cognitive, motor, social, and language abilities. Item response theory was used to examine item validity. RESULTS: We interviewed 415 parents. SWYC provided the most information on the children's development between 10 and 30 months. The performance of Brazilian and North American children was quite similar when children are younger than 36 months old. Above 36 months, North American children performed almost all items earlier than Brazilians. Convergent validity was 0.73 and internal consistency 0.97. CONCLUSION: The Brazilian version of the Developmental Milestones questionnaire presented acceptable measurement qualities that support the SWYCs potential as a developmental screening tool. As we found important differences between North American and Brazilian children in achieving the milestones, especially among the oldest children, additional normative studies are needed.

Endovascular treatment of carotid-cavernous fistulas: review of 12 cases.

Carotid-cavernous fistulas (CCFs) are an uncommon pathology in current neurosurgical practice. Furthermore, they generally present a challenge to the neurosurgeon because of both their deep location and the major neurovascular structures that surround them. CCFs consist of a vascular anomaly in which blood flows from meningeal branches of the internal and external carotid arteries, or directly from the internal carotid artery, into the venous circulation around and in the cavernous sinus. Twelve patients with direct and indirect/dural CCFs who underwent examination and treatment between July 2003 and February 2006 are reported here. All patients of this retrospective evaluation were symptomatic at the time of diagnosis, which was confirmed by cerebral angiography. The patients were treated by endovascular approaches and the CCFs were occluded. From our evaluation, we concluded that the endovascular procedure is safe, effective and minimally invasive in patients with CCF.