An analysis of 1256 cases of sporadic ruptured cerebral aneurysm in a single Chinese institution

Abstract

Background: To review the epidemiology of sporadic ruptured cerebral aneurysm.

Methods: This is a retrospective study of consecutive 1256 Chinese patients between January 2006 and January 2013, who were admitted to the Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, China, for spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage due to a rupture of cerebral artery aneurysm. In 288 males and 478 females, the size of aneurysms was measured by a neuroradiologist on DSA. In 123 males and 184 females, the size of the ruptured aneurysms was not measured. The remaining patients, with 61 males and 122 females, had multiple aneurysms, and the medical record could not reliably determine the specific aneurysm responsible for the rupture.

Results: In total there were 784 females and 472 males with a female/male ratio of 1.66. The female/male ratio was down to 0.50 for patients younger than 35 yrs. For both males and females, aneurysm rupture was most common during the age of 50-59 yrs. Ruptured aneurysms were mostly of 2 mm-5 mm in size (47.1%), followed by 5 mm-10 mm (39.7%). Ruptured single cerebral aneurysm occurred in anterior circulation in 95.0% of the cases, with 5.0% occurred in posterior circulation. Ruptured aneurysm most commonly occurred at posterior communicating artery (34.9%) and anterior communicating artery (29.5%). 183 cases (14.6%) had multiple aneurysms.

Conclusions: With younger patients, there is a male predominance in our series. Ninety percent of patients have ruptured aneurysms less than 10 mm in size.

Figure 1. Age characteristics in the ruptured cerebral aneurysm patients.

A: age distribution for all 1256 patients; B: age distribution for 472 male patients; C: age distribution for 784 female patients.