There is substantial evidence that the administration of iodized salt or iodinated vegetable oil or iodide tablets to populations of women who are at risk of iodine deficiency before and during the first trimester of pregnancy prevents sporadic and endemic cretinism. Treatment begun during the second trimester protects the fetal brain to a varying degree. Treatment that is started after the beginning of the third trimester does not improve the neurologic status, although head growth and statural development may improve slightly (Cao et al). In sporadic cretinism, if the condition is recognized at birth and treated consistently with thyroid hormones, height and mental development can be stimulated to normal or near-normal levels. The extent of recovery depends on the severity and duration of intrauterine hypothyroidism, that is, its duration before treatment was begun and the adequacy of therapy. In most patients, some degree of cognitive impairment persists throughout life.
This term was introduced by Rothermich and von Haam in 1941 to describe what they considered to be a fairly uniform clinical state in patients with acute abdominal symptoms referable to pancreatic disease, mainly pancreatitis. The encephalopathy, as they described it, consisted of an agitated, confused state, sometimes with hallucinations and clouding of consciousness, dysarthria, and changing rigidity of the limbs—all of which fluctuated over a period of hours or days. Coma and quadriplegia have been reported. At autopsy, a variety of lesions have been described; two cases have had central pontine myelinolysis and others have had small foci of necrosis and edema, petechial hemorrhages, and “demyelination” scattered through the cerebrum, brainstem, and cerebellum. These have been uncritically attributed to the action of released lipases and proteases from the diseased pancreas (see review of this subject by Sharf and Levy).
The term pancreatic encephalopathy is now more often applied to a depressive illness that seems to occur with disproportionate frequency before the symptoms of a pancreatic cancer become apparent. More common in our experience are numerous cases of pancreatic cancer and sequential cerebral emboli from nonbacterial thrombotic (marantic) endocarditis.
The status of pancreatic encephalopathy, in the authors’ opinion, is uncertain. Pallis and Lewis also express reservations and suggest that before such a diagnosis can be entertained in a patient with acute pancreatitis, one must exclude delirium tremens, shock, renal failure, hypoglycemia, diabetic acidosis, hyperosmolality, and hypocalcemia or hypercalcemia—any one of which may complicate the underlying disease. Other cases conform to the encephalopathy of multiorgan failure, discussed earlier.
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