title: Single photon emission computerized tomography in children with developmental language disorder--a preliminary report.
abstract: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a diagnosis given to a nonautistic child who has inadequate language acquisition despite adequate hearing, sensorimotor, and cognitive skills. We used high-resolution single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) with labeled technetium-99m-D, L-hexamethyl-propylene amine oxime (99mTc-HMPAO) to measure regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in 11 children with DLD. Their mean age was 5 years 10 months (range, 4 yr 2 mo to 10 yr 9 mo) and mean nonverbal IQ was 107 (range, 82-137). When inter-hemispheric flow discrepancy was defined as a bilateral rCBF difference of more than 10%, 10 children (90.9%) had discrepant blood flow. Temporal lobes were involved in all 10 children: lateral-temporal in five, medial-temporal in four, and mesial-temporal in four. Though the study was small and the results are preliminary, results suggest that DLD may be a consequence of an underlying neurobiologic problem in areas of the brain known to be involved with language.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, Tainan.
authors.forename: Bi-Fang
authors.initials: BF
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Pinchen
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Yuh-Jyh
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Jong
authors.forename: Hsiu-Yi
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Cheng-Chung
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology; D008297:Male; D019690:Technetium Tc 99m Exametazime; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon
chemical_list: D019690:Technetium Tc 99m Exametazime