Published 24 July 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2586
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b2586

Clinical Review

Spontaneous intracerebral haemorrhage

Rustam Al-Shahi Salman, MRC clinician scientist and honorary consultant neurologist1, Daniel L Labovitz, assistant professor2, Christian Stapf, assistant professor of neurology3

1 Division of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Edinburgh, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh EH4 2XU, 2 NYU Medical Center, Schwartz Health Care Center, Suite 5F, 530 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA, 3 Stroke Unit, Service de Neurologie, Hôpital Lariboisière—APHP, 2 Rue Ambroise Paré, 75475 Paris cedex 10, France

Correspondence to: R Al-Shahi Salman Rustam.Al-Shahi@ed.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Spontaneous (non-traumatic) intracerebral haemorrhage accounts for at least 10% of all strokes in the United Kingdom,1 but the incidence is higher in some ethnic groups.w1 Intracerebral haemorrhage may present with a sudden focal neurological deficit or a reduced level of consciousness, after which it kills about half of those affected within one month and leaves most survivors disabled.2

Although early case fatality after spontaneous intracerebral haemorrhage has not changed over the past two decades,1 2 brain imaging has illuminated the pathophysiology of intracerebral haemorrhage and its various causes,3 w2 such that the term primary intracerebral haemorrhage now seems antiquated. Improving prevention of intracerebral haemorrhage in primary care and its outcome in secondary care is especially important in view of trends towards a rising incidence of intracerebral haemorrhage in an ageing population.1

No clinical scoring system has been shown to reliably differentiate intracerebral haemorrhage from ischaemic stroke.w3 Timely brain imaging is the key . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Subarachnoid haemorrhage
Rustam Al-Shahi, Philip M White, Richard J Davenport, and Kenneth W Lindsay
BMJ 2006 333: 235-240. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Allow Natural Death?
Ronald F Ingle
bmj.com, 19 Aug 2009 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ