LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Transient cerebellar mutism in childhood

Mehmet Turgut

Received: 28 December 2006 /Published online: 24 March 2007# Springer-Verlag 2007

Dear Editor:I read with interest the article by Huber et al. entitled“Long-term effects of transient cerebellar mutism aftercerebellar astrocytoma or medulloblastoma tumor resectionin childhood” [1] and wish to congratulate my colleagueson this unique contribution to the literature regardingpostoperative cerebellar mutism syndrome. Unfortunately,a few following points crossed my mind while I wasreading the article. In addition, I would like to add thefollowing important points to the discussion for the sake ofcompleteness of the information presented:

1. For your readers, actually, it is important to rememberthat transient cerebellar mutism is not only a postoper-ative entity, but also a preoperative condition due tovarious vascular, traumatic, or infectious etiology [2, 3].

2. Based on my experience and literature data, I com-pletely agree with the authors that it is prudent toprovide children who manifest transient cerebellarmutism with speech and language therapy after theirrecovery from posterior fossa surgery.

3. Lastly, the structure of a scientific contribution is asimportant as the content proper, which is completelythe responsibility of the author(s) of the article.According to the Index Medicus data, the titles of 1

and 11 are incomplete. Moreover, the page numbers inreferences 4 and 10 are not correct. Furthermore,reference 7 [David et al. (1997) Medulloblastoma: isthe 5-year survival rate improving? A review of 80cases from a single institution. J Neurosurg 86:13–21]and reference 16 [Huber-Okrainec et al. (2002) Neuro-motor speech deficits in children and adults with spinabifida and hydrocephalus. Brain Lang 80:592–602]were not cited in their article.

References

1. Huber FH, Bradley K, Spiegler BJ, Dennis M (2006) Long-termeffects of transient cerebellar mutism after cerebellar astrocytomaor medulloblastoma tumor resection in childhood. Child’s NervSyst 22:132–138

2. Akil H, Statham PFX, Götz M, Bramley P, Whittle IR (2006) Adultcerebellar mutism and cognitive–affective syndrome caused bycystic hemangioblastoma. Acta Neurochir (Wien) 148:597–598

3. Al-Anazi A, Hassounah M, Sheikh B, Barayan S (2001) Cerebellarmutism caused by arteriovenous malformation of the vermis. Br JNeurosurg 15:47–50

Childs Nerv Syst (2007) 23:477DOI 10.1007/s00381-007-0321-x

M. Turgut (*)Department of Neurosurgery,Adnan Menderes University School of Medicine,No. 6, Daire 7,09020 Aydin, Turkeye-mail: drmturgut@yahoo.com