Abstract
There is always a fear being attacked by subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) for a member of the family with a history of SAH. I have reported a significant correlation between a family history of SAH and the discovery of an unruptured aneurysm in a group of healthy volunteers at my Brain Dock. This time, in order to confirm such a correlation, an incidence of asymptomatic, unruptured cerebral aneurysms was studied among the outpatients and inpatients with a family history of SAH within the second degree of consanguinity. The result was compared with the updated data gathered from 1, 000 healthy volunteers at the Brain Dock. Fortyone unruptured cerebral aneurysms were found in 34 (13.3%) of 244 patients. This incidence was significantly higher than that found at the Brain Dock of healthy volunteers (6%). Furthermore, patients who had a family history of SAH combined with multiple systemic risk factors were found to have the highest incidence of unruptured aneurysms statistically (32% ; odds ratio 3.49, 95% confidence interval 1.37-8.9). These findings suggest that a family history of SAH, especially with the addition of more than one systemic risk factor, should identify a high-risk group of patients with possible cerebral aneurysms. Aggressively screening these highrisk patients combined with optimum surgical treatment of unruptured aneurysms should decrease the incidence of SAH in the future. There were four cases (0.4%) of AVM found at the Brain Dock and none of them have a family history of AVM.
