• Courtney Pendleton, George I Jallo, and Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa.
• Department of Neurosurgery, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
• World Neurosurg. 2012 Dec 1;78(6):712-4.

BackgroundThe treatment of brain abscesses remains one of the success stories of contemporary neurosurgery; what began as a nearly uniformly fatal disease at the turn of the 20th century has become a largely curable ailment through the use of operative and pharmaceutical intervention.MethodsFollowing institutional review board approval, and through the courtesy of the Alan Mason Chesney Archives, the surgical files of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1896 to 1912, were reviewed.ResultsA total of six patients were operated on for intracranial abscesses. Three patients died during their admission, the remaining three were discharged with a condition listed as "improved" or "well."ConclusionsCushing employed a variety of operative drainage techniques for intracranial abscesses and implemented an early antibacterial agent to provide adjuvant treatment in one patient. Although these cases demonstrate a 50% mortality rate, they provide insight into the challenges faced by neurosurgeons treating intracranial abscesses at the turn of the 20th century.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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