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. 2014 Oct;10(2):101-5.
doi: 10.13004/kjnt.2014.10.2.101. Epub 2014 Oct 31.

Recurrence of the Chronic Subdural Hematoma after Burr-Hole Drainage with or without Intraoperative Saline Irrigation

Dong Hwan Kim  1 , Hwan Soo Kim  1 , Hyuk Jin Choi  1 , In Ho Han  1 , Won Ho Cho  1 , Kyoung Hyup Nam  1
Affiliations

Recurrence of the Chronic Subdural Hematoma after Burr-Hole Drainage with or without Intraoperative Saline Irrigation

Dong Hwan Kim et al. Korean J Neurotrauma. 2014 Oct.

Abstract

Objective: Although standard method has not been established for the chronic subdural hematoma (CSDH), burr-hole trephination and closed system drainage with or without irrigation has been widely accepted as the treatment of choice. The aim of this study is to analysis the post-operative recurrence rates after burr-hole trephination of the CSDH according to the conduction of irrigation.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 184 patients with CSDH who underwent surgical treatment between January 2009 and December 2013. And 152 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria as follows: 1) CSDH diagnosed on computed tomography (CT), 2) unilateral hematoma, 3) burr-hole trephination with closed system drainage, and 4) follow-up CT for at least 3 months. Those patients were divided into two groups. Group A (n=38) underwent burr-hole trephination without irrigation, and Group B (n=114), burr-hole trephination with saline irrigation.

Results: The overall post-operative recurrence rate was 19.1% (n=29) in this study. The majority of recurrence showed in Group B. Twenty-eight patients (24.6%) of Group B had recurrence and only 1 patient (2.6%) of Group A showed recurrence. The recurrence rate was significantly higher in Group B compared with Group A (p=0.003). Another affecting factor for the recurrence was the amount of postoperative pneumocephalus (p=0.02). No catastrophic complications were found in postoperative course.

Conclusion: Although there was no difference of clinical outcome in both groups, the recurrence rate was higher in saline irrigation group compared with no irrigation group. We suggest that saline irrigation procedure be reserved only for selected cases in CSDH burr-hole surgery.

Keywords: Drainage; Hematoma subdural chronic; Pneumocephalus; Recurrence; Therapeutic irrigation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no financial conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Volumetric analysis of pneumocephalus was calculat-ed using ImageJ. The pneumoce-phalus of subdural space on axial brain computed tomography was bounded as region of interest which multiplied by the slice thickness. And all slice volumes were added up to estimate the vo-lume of each 3D structure.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Kaplan-Meier plot shows difference between the period of post-operative pneumocephalus in subdural space (black: not irrigation, gray: irrigation).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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