• Aurélie Degeneffe, Michaël Bruneau, Julien Spitaels, Nathalie Gilis, Olivier De Witte, and Alphonse Lubansu.
• Department of Neurosurgery, Erasmus Hospital, Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: aurelie.degeneffe@erasme.ulb.ac.be.
• World Neurosurg. 2020 Sep 1; 141: 157161157-161.

BackgroundWhen Belgium's coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak began in March 2020, our neurosurgical department followed the protocol of most surgical departments in the world and postponed elective surgery. However, patients with tumor-like brain lesions requiring urgent surgery still received treatment as usual, in order to ensure ongoing neurooncologic care. From a series of 31 patients admitted for brain surgery, 3 were confirmed as infected by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.Case DescriptionWe present the clinical outcomes of these 3 COVID-19 patients, who underwent an intracerebral biopsy in our department during April 2020. All suffered from a diffuse intraparenchymal hemorrhage postoperatively. Unfortunately, we were not able to identify a clear etiology of these postoperative complications. It could be hypothesized that an active COVID-19 infection status may be related to a higher bleeding risk. The remaining 28 neurooncologic non-COVID-19 patients underwent uneventful surgery during the same period.ConclusionsThis case series reports the previously unreported and unexpected outcomes of COVID-19 patients suffering from acute hemorrhage after intracerebral biopsy procedures. Although no direct relation can yet be established, we recommend the neurosurgical community be cautious in such cases.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

30 keywords...

hide…