Among 365 consecutive patients with intracerebral hemorrhage, examined between March 1980 and November 1986, thirty-six cases (31 men and five women) were found to have a history of cerebral ischemic stroke. This group of patients was studied in this paper retrospectively. The mean age at the time of the hemorrhagic stroke was 62.0 and the age range was from 41 to 80.
Clinically, twenty-nine of the 36 cases had had major completed strokes, four had had vertebrobasilar insufficiencies, two had had transient ischemic strokes and one had had a progressing stroke. Thirty patients had had positive findings in computed tomography, 80%of which showed lacunar infarctions in the basal ganglia or thalamus. Angiography performed in 22 cases had revealed only five occlusive or stenotic lesions.
For the prevention of recurrent cerebral ischemia, seventeen of the 36 patients had been treated with antiplatelet drugs (APT (+) group). The other 19 cases had received neither antiplatelet drugs nor anticoagulants (APT (-) group). In the APT (+) group, 13 had had aspirin and/or trapidil, three had had ticlopidine and one had had dipyridamole.
Thirty-one patients were hypertensive[APT (+) 17; APT (-) 14]. There was one cerebral subcortical hemorrhage, and 14 putaminal, 16 thalamic, and five infratentorial hemorrhages. Especially in the APT (+) group, 16 of 17 (94%) hemorrhages were putaminal or thalamic. Dividing the volume of hematoma into “small” (<10m
l), “medium” (10-30m
l) and “large” (>30m
l), there were eight small, six medium and three large hematomas in the APT (+) group, and 14 small, four medium and one large in the APT (-) group. The mean volume was 15.8ml in the APT (+) group and 9.6ml in the APT (-) group.
Prognosis after hemorrhagic stroke was divided into two groups: namely “good” or “poor”. In the APT (-) group, 14 patients were considered “good” and five “poor”, while only five in the APT (+) group were “good” and 12 were “poor”. The tendency was that patients of advanced age, with completed major stroke, lacunar infarction on CT scan, thalamic hemorrhage or large hematoma volume had a poor prognosis.
For the treatment and/or the prevention of cerebral ischemic strokes, many clinicians recently use antiplatelet drugs, whose efficacy, however, is not free of controversy. This report suggests that, to avoid hazardous hemorrhagic complications, meticulous care should be taken to control the blood pressure, especially in aged patients with lacunar infarction.
View full abstract