Background

Many patients with neurocysticercosis manifest cognitive damage, with important effects on their quality of life.

Objective

to determine the correlation between cognitive status and tomographic findings in patients with neurocysticercosis.

Method

correlational, prospective and cross-sectional study, which included 93 patients diagnosed with neurocysticercosis treated in two Ecuadorian hospitals, from May 2019 to May 2020. The Folstein Mini-Mental State Examination was used for cognitive assessment. The relative risk and the Chi square test were estimated, considering statistical significance if p<0.05. For the multivariate analysis, a binary logistic regression model was used.

Results

among the tomographic findings, lesions greater than 1 cm (32.2%), multiple (30.1%), located in the parietal region (34.4%) and subarachnoid (46.2%) enhance. The cognitive evaluation showed normal results in 74.2% of the cases, as well as mild to moderate dementia in 9.7% of the patients. The most affected area was the language (54.8%). Dementia was mainly associated with lesion size greater than 1 centimeter [RR: 7.35; 95% CI: 1.62-33.3], followed by the number of lesions (multiple or racemose) and the mixed topography. In the multivariate analysis, these lost the correlation.

Conclusion

The cognitive deficit had a lower prevalence than that described in the specialized literature, and was associated with tomographic variables such as the size, number and location of the lesions; in multivariate analysis, none of these factors maintained their statistical significance.

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