This article is part of the supplement: 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida .

Oral presentation

A survey of people with ventriculoatrial shunts in the community

Roger Bayston¹ and Rosemary Batchelor²

¹  BRIG, Divn Orthopaedic and Accident Surgery, C Floor West Block, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK

²  Association for Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida, 42 Park Road, Peterborough PE1 2UQ, UK

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from 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida
Cambridge, UK. 30 August – 2 September 2006

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research 2006, 3(Suppl 1):S5doi:10.1186/1743-8454-3-S1-S5

Published:	21 December 2006

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

Though most shunts originally used in UK were ventriculoatrial (VA), they are now rarely used and the ventriculoperitoneal (VP) route is preferred. Stated reasons include that VA shunts require more revisions, that they are more prone to infection, and that such infections are likely to lead to septicaemia and nephritis. Adult shunted patients are often discharged from follow-up and do not see a neurosurgeon thereafter, and those seen because of problems might present a skewed picture of the whole. We therefore decided to survey people with VA shunts in the community to determine whether they still had their VA shunt and whether they had had problems with it.