Conservative management for pediatric patients with chiari 1 anomaly: A retrospective study.

Objective: To better understand the natural history of non-surgical management of chiari 1 anomaly.

Patients And Methods: After obtaining approval of the institutional review board, medical records and radiological exams of patients treated for CM1 at our institution between the years 2010 and 2016 were reviewed. Twenty-nine patients total were included in our study.

Results: The average age of our patient population was 8.5 years old at the time of diagnosis. The average tonsillar herniation on first MRI was 9.4 mm (+/- 4.6) and the average tonsillar herniation on second MRI was 10.4 mm (+/- 4.8). The average follow up time of our sample of patients was 26 months. Of the 29 patients in our study 9 (31 %) had symptomatic presentation. Interestingly, four of our patients (13.8 %) presented with epilepsy.

Conclusions: Our findings support the previous work that nonoperative management is best in asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic chiari patients.