Incidence of Intracranial Hemorrhage After a Cranial Operation

Objective: To describe the characteristics of patients who underwent a cranial operation and postoperatively suffered an intracranial hemorrhage significant enough to require evacuation. MATERIALS & METHODS : 3,109 cranial operations were performed at Houston Methodist Hospital (Texas Medical Center campus) between January 2009 and December 2013. Of these, 59 cases required a second operation for evacuation of an intracranial hemorrhage. The information gathered included the patients' age, gender, past medical history, medications and laboratory data, initial diagnosis, date/type of first and second operations, duration of hospitalization, discharge condition, and discharge destination.

Results: The study found a 1.90% rate of a postoperative hemorrhage significant enough to require evacuation after a cranial operation. The average age in the cohort requiring reoperation was 63 +/- 14 years with 42 male and 17 female. Hematoma evacuations were performed at various time intervals depending on the pathology treated at the initial operation. The time to second operation was 2.7 days after intraparenchymal hematoma evacuation, 6.0 days after cerebrovascular surgery, 6.2 days after tumor surgery and 9.7 days after subdural hematoma evacuation. The rate of postoperative hematoma development was 9.1% after a subdural hematoma evacuation, while it was only 1.1% in all other operations. Overall, those requiring hematoma evacuation had a 15% mortality rate, 64% were non-ambulatory, and 54% were discharged to long-term acute care facility, skilled nursing facility, rehabilitation facility or hospice. CONCLUSIONS : Neurological outcomes were poor in patients who underwent a cranial operation and required a second operation to remove a hematoma. This study suggests close observation of elderly males after a cranial operation, especially after subdural hematoma evacuation, and longer observation time for patients undergoing subdural hematoma evacuation than intraparenchymal hematoma evacuation, tumor surgery or cerebrovascular surgery.