Spectrum of intracranial incidental findings on pediatric brain magnetic resonance imaging: What clinician should know?

Table 6 A proposal for a common clinical profile of intracranial incidental findings on pediatric brain magnetic resonance imaging

	Clinical implication
Discovery of the unexpected incidental findings	Revealing during investigation enhances the patients or parents anxiety. The evidence-based knowledge will provide an additional confidence for the practicing physicians
Type of the incidental findings	Varieties of white matter changes are reported. However, these usually do not initiate a neurologic consultation. Chiari type I malformation, arachnoid cyst, and pineal cyst, all continued to be a common source of concern for some physicians
Distribution of incidental findings	Attention to the distribution of findings is a useful tool in deciding the clinical importance of such findings. A midline lesion particularly in the posterior fossa and hippocampal location is likely to have a serious clinical implication
The clinical context in which MRI was performed	This is probably the single most important step in understating the clinical implication of incidental findings (Table 6). This is particularly important when the child was referred to neurology after revealing the incidental finding on brain MRI

MRI: Magnetic resonance imaging.