Intracranial Hemorrhage, Cysts, Tumors, and Destructive Lesions

Destructive cerebral lesions are the result of an insult to a normally developed fetal brain. The most common causes are hemorrhage, hypoxia-ischemia, and infections. However, the pathophysiology is unclear in many cases. The prognosis is usually poor. This chapter describes the main features of fetal intracranial destructive lesions, including intracranial hemorrhages, porencephaly, hydranencephaly, and schizencephaly. Other intracranial lesions that develop late in gestation, including intracranial cysts and intracranial tumors, are also described.