When looking at images of a brain with posterior cortical atrophy, one can see a loss in volume of the dorsal and ventral visual pathways, where visual stimuli is brought to the visual cortex and integrated information is sent back out to other areas of the brain. Because this disorder results in visual impairments, there is often a missed or delayed diagnosis, as the assumption is that there is a problem is in the eyes when the reality is that the problem is all the way in the back of the brain. Prion diseases, a group of invariably fatal encephalopathies that cause the progressive death of neurons. Infections
Where an infectious agent or the inflammatory reaction to it destroys neurons and their axons, these include...

Encephalitis, acute inflammation in the brain
Neurosyphilis, an infection in the brain or spinal chord
AIDS, disease of the immune system

Drug-induced
Alcohol (partially reversible): Standardized MRI evidence suggest chronic alcoholism (alcohol use disorder) is associated with widespread cortical atrophy and major brain changes. In contrast to healthy controls, macrostructural findings indicate alcoholic brains are smaller in mass and volume. Neuroimaging studies also show that cortical shrinkage in "uncomplicated alcoholism" is most severe in the frontal lobe in comparison to the other divisions of the cerebral cortex. In addition, neurological diseases that co-occur with excessive alcohol consumption—such as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS)—are characterized by substantial volume deficits of the diencephalon structures.
This can include treatment with antibiotics and drainage, however, it has become widely recommended that dentists should improve the antibiotic prescribing practices, by limiting the prescriptions to the acute cases that suffer from the severe signs of spreading infection, in an attempt to overcome the development of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains in the population. A 2018 Cochrane review has found insufficient evidence to rule out if patients with acute dental abscesses can benefit from antibiotic prescriptions.If the tooth can be restored, root canal therapy can be performed. Non-restorable teeth must be extracted, followed by curettage of all apical soft tissue. Unless they are symptomatic, teeth treated with root canal therapy should be evaluated at 1- and 2-year intervals after the root canal therapy to rule out possible lesional enlargement and to ensure appropriate healing. Abscesses may fail to heal for several reasons:

Cyst formation
Inadequate root canal therapy
Vertical root fractures
Foreign material in the lesion
Associated periodontal disease
Penetration of the maxillary sinusFollowing conventional, adequate root canal therapy, abscesses that do not heal or enlarge are often treated with surgery and filling the root tips; and will require a biopsy to evaluate the diagnosis. See also
Barodontalgia
Focal infection theory
Intraoral dental sinus

References


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