BALTIMORE –Aggressive decompression dramatically improved survival in patients who had trapped ventricle syndrome as a result of tumor or intracerebral hemorrhage in a retrospective study.
Overall mortality in the cohort was 70% among those who had no decompression, Dr. Gabriel L. Pagani-Estevez said at the annual meeting of the American Neurological Association. But it dropped to 19% among those who underwent some form of decompression therapy. Even after controlling for confounding factors like age, etiology, and hemorrhage volume, decompression remained a significant independent predictor of survival, said Dr. Pagani-Estevez, a neurology resident at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
Despite all the methodological issues inherent in a retrospective study, the findings “provide at least a suggestion that neurosurgical intervention can markedly reduce mortality in trapped ventricle syndrome,” he said. “Now, research needs to clarify the ideal intervention, the effect of decompression on functional outcome, and which patients might derive the most benefit from treatment.”
The cohort comprised 392 patients who developed ventricular trapping and were treated during 2002-2010. They were a mean of 58 years old. Most (223) were not on anticoagulation therapy. A total of 80 patients were taking aspirin, and the remainder were taking other anticoagulants. The median midline shift was about 10 mm.
Trapping was caused by a tumor in 177 patients. Other etiologies included intracerebral hemorrhage (80), subdural hematoma (55), trauma (26), and stroke (18). Unspecified causes made up the remainder.
The left lateral ventricle was most often involved (176). The right lateral ventricle was trapped in 159 patients and both were involved in 32. Thirteen patients had a trapped fourth ventricle, and 12 had unspecified trapping.
Some kind of decompression procedure was performed on 221 patients. These included craniotomy (126), craniectomy (26), external ventricular drain (30), ventricular-peritoneal shunt (23), and endoscopic septum pellucidum fenestration (16).
Comparisons showed significantly decreased mortality for intervention vs. nonintervention in groups with various causes of ventricular trapping: intracerebral hemorrhage (48% vs. 95%), tumor (12% vs. 47%), and subdural hematoma (20% vs. 90%).
There were nonsignificant declines in mortality among patients who underwent intervention for ventricular trapping caused by trauma or ischemic stroke, but the number of patients in those subgroups were small, which probably confounded the results, Dr. Pagani-Estevez said.
He then conducted a multivariate analysis to determine patient characteristics that might have contributed to survival. Patients who had a decompression procedure were 87% less likely to die than were those who had not – a highly significant finding (P = .0001). A midline shift conferred a slight increase in the risk of death, while having intracerebral hemorrhage as the trapping etiology increased the risk fourfold.
Dr. Alejandro A. Rabinstein
Trapped ventricle carries a notoriously poor prognosis, said Dr. Alejandro A. Rabinstein, a coauthor on the study. “By the time you develop it, it’s a very bad situation, so whatever way you can achieve decompression may improve the situation,” said Dr. Rabinstein, a critical care neurologist who is also at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. “If you don’t think the patient has enough left to merit the intervention, then you just don’t do it. But despite that limitation, if you think the patient can recover some function, it’s appropriate. An intervention will make patients survive way more often than no intervention. Without something, though, the prospect of survival is bleak.”
Neither Dr. Pagani-Estevez nor Dr. Rabinstein had any financial disclosures.
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