Early symptoms may also include:
Eyes that appear to gaze downward
Irritability
Seizures
Separated sutures
Sleepiness
VomitingSymptoms that may occur in older children can include:
Brief, shrill, high-pitched cry
Changes in personality, memory, or the ability to reason or think
Changes in facial appearance and eye spacing (craniofacial disproportion)
Crossed eyes or uncontrolled eye movements
Difficulty feeding
Excessive sleepiness
Headaches
Irritability, poor temper control
Loss of bladder control (urinary incontinence)
Loss of coordination and trouble walking
Muscle spasticity (spasm)
Slow growth (child 0–5 years)
Delayed milestones
Failure to thrive
Slow or restricted movement
VomitingBecause hydrocephalus can injure the brain, thought and behavior may be adversely affected. Learning disabilities, including short-term memory loss, are common among those with hydrocephalus, who tend to score better on verbal IQ than on performance IQ, which is thought to reflect the distribution of nerve damage to the brain. Hydrocephalus that is present from birth can cause long-term complications with speech and language. Children can have issues such as nonverbal learning disorder, difficulty understanding complex and abstract concepts, difficulty retrieving stored information, and spatial/perceptual disorders. Children with hydrocephalus are often known in having the difficulty in understanding the concepts within conversation and tend to use words they know or have heard. However, the severity of hydrocephalus can differ considerably between individuals, and some are of average or above-average intelligence. Someone with hydrocephalus may have coordination and visual problems, or clumsiness. They may reach puberty earlier than the average child (this is called precocious puberty). About one in four develops epilepsy. Cause
Congenital
Congenital hydrocephalus is present in the infant prior to birth, meaning the fetus developed hydrocephalus in utero during fetal development.
Hydrocephalus ex vacuo also refers to an enlargement of cerebral ventricles and subarachnoid spaces, and is usually due to brain atrophy (as it occurs in dementias), post-traumatic brain injuries, and even in some psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. As opposed to hydrocephalus, this is a compensatory enlargement of the CSF-spaces in response to brain parenchyma loss; it is not the result of increased CSF pressure. Mechanism
Hydrocephalus is usually due to blockage of CSF outflow in the ventricles or in the subarachnoid space over the brain. In a person without hydrocephalus, CSF continuously circulates through the brain, its ventricles and the spinal cord and is continuously drained away into the circulatory system. Alternatively, the condition may result from an overproduction of the CSF, from a congenital malformation blocking normal drainage of the fluid, or from complications of head injuries or infections.Compression of the brain by the accumulating fluid eventually may cause neurological symptoms such as convulsions, intellectual disability, and epileptic seizures. These signs occur sooner in adults, whose skulls are no longer able to expand to accommodate the increasing fluid volume within. Fetuses, infants, and young children with hydrocephalus typically have an abnormally large head, excluding the face, because the pressure of the fluid causes the individual skull bones—which have yet to fuse—to bulge outward at their juncture points.