British journal of neurosurgery
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Hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) also known as Osler-Weber-Rendu disease is a rare autosomal dominant condition causing vascular dysplasia. Cerebral abscess formation, secondary to paradoxical septic emboli via HHT-derived pulmonary arteriovenous malformations (pAVMs) in this context is well documented. Herein, we present the first case of subdural empyema with this aetiology.
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Dural cavernous haemangiomas are rare, and they do not display a classical ring of haemosiderin on MRI as parenchymal cavernous haemangiomas. Sometimes, they are misinterpreted as meningiomas with a dural tail sign. In this short report, a 37-year-old woman was diagnosed with a convexity cavernous haemangioma, and the tumour was totally resected.
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The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety and outcomes of decompressive craniectomy (DC) after intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (IV tPA) administration for malignant cerebral infarction. ⋯ Although the main limitation is that the number of patients in our serie was small, which reduced the statistical power, our study suggest that DC after failure of IV tPA administration for malignant cerebral infarction is safe and did not cause an excess of complications arising from the use of fibrinolytic.
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Intra-cranial and spinal surgery is associated with significant morbidity (23.6% and 11.2%) (5) . Fully informed consent, shared decision-making and optimal peri-operative care are essential to ensure excellent surgical outcome. There is evidence to support the use of formal pre-operative risk assessment to facilitate this in non-cardiac surgery but little is published on best practice for neurosurgery. Our aim was to establish current practice in pre-operative risk assessment at UK Neurosciences centres. ⋯ Our survey is the first of its kind in the UK for neurosciences. As expected, formal risk assessment and multi-disciplinary team discussion is not routine. Neurosurgery has a high risk of morbidity and mortality, and pre-operative risk assessment should therefore be considered in line with national recommendations. Further work is required to establish best practice in neurosurgery to ensure that patients are appropriately consented, and to improve standards of care and support surgical outcome data.
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Meta Analysis Comparative Study
Comparison of early and late decompressive craniectomy on the long-term outcome in patients with moderate and severe traumatic brain injury: a meta-analysis.
Several studies have searched whether early decompressive craniectomy (DC) can improve the long-term outcome of patients with moderate and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, the effects of early DC remain unclear. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to assess whether early DC (time to surgery after injury <24 h) is better than late DC (>24 h) after moderate and severe TBI. ⋯ Bilateral pupil abnormality is positive related to unfavourable outcome and mortality in the patients following DC after moderate and severe TBI. Early DC may be more helpful to improve the long-term outcome of patients with refractory raised intracranial cerebral pressure after moderate and severe TBI. However, more RCTs with better control of patients with bilateral pupil abnormality divided into the early and late groups are needed in the future.