The prognosis of spontaneous (hypertensive) intracerebral hematoma associated with the intraventricular hemorrhage were discussed with the base of computerized tomography (CT) findings in their acute stage.
104 (47%) out of 219 patients with hypertensive intracerebral hemorrhage revealed intraventricular hemorrhage in our service from January 1978 to December 1980. In these cases infratentorial, cerebellar and pontine hemorrhage were not included. Namely, 22 out of 93 cases of putaminal hemorrhage, 47 out of 61 cases in thalamic type, 30 out of 39 cases in combined type and 5 out of 26 cases in subcortical type were demonstrated the ventricular hemorrhage by CT examination, respectively.
In early period of CT utilization, the ventricular hemorrhage had generally been accepted as one of serious signs from the knowledges, which had been obtained from postmortem examination in such cases. Recent experiences, however, suggested that cases of intracerebral hematoma with the ventricle rupture were not always resulted to the poor prognosis. In this paper, following factors, which may influence the prognosis of such cases, were selected and investigated in our series of the cases.
These factors were :
1) hematoma size
2) intraventricular blood extention to 3rd and 4th ventricle
3) acute enlargement of the ventricle
4) disappearance of the ambient cistern
5) extension of hematoma to the hypothalamus
6) level of consciousness at admission time
Cases, which had extension of the hematoma to the 3rd and 4th ventricle, were clearly divided into two contradictory group, namely, poor and good prognostic group. They showed nearly equal occurance. However, it was noted that cases with the cast formation below the third ventricle resulted poor prognosis.
Statistical analysis of our cases led the following conclusions i.e. the influencing factors of the poor outcome are :
1) hematoma size is larger than 3×3 cm
2) combination of acute ventricular enlargement, disappearance of the ambient cistern and hypothalamic extension of hematoma
3) cast formation of blood in the 3rd and 4th ventricle
And, it is our impression that, if there are cases without abovementioned three findings, the immediate ventricular drainage will not be indicated but existence of increased intracranial pressure or critical condition.
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