A Clinical Analysis in Risk Factors of Chronic Subdural Hematoma: Focusing on the Age / 대한신경손상학회지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: The current understanding reveals that chronic subdural hematoma (CSDH) is mostly the results of direct or indirect head trauma. Other factors such as alcoholism, medication (such as anticoagulants or antiplatelet agents), liver cirrhosis, chronic renal failure and hematologic disease are also well known as causes of CSDH. Of them, the authors attempted to identify the risk factors of CSDH by focusing on the age with a view point of recent increase in the elderly population. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed 216 consecutive CSDH patients who underwent surgery at our institute between 2002 and 2011. We classified them into two groups according to the patients' age (Group A or =65 years old). Various factors were investigated for risk factor of CSDH, such as head trauma, chronic alcoholism, epilepsy, previous shunt surgery, underlying disease having bleeding tendency or medication affecting blood coagulation. And these factors were compared between the two groups for statistical significance. RESULTS: Among the 216 patients, group A included 81 patients (37.5%), group B included 135 patients (62.5%). The medication of group B had significantly more proportion than group A, comparing to the result that group B had relatively less proportion of head trauma and alcoholism (p<0.05). And medication was more associated with non-traumatic CSDH, especially in group B. CONCLUSION: As previously reported, head trauma or alcoholism are also most important causes as a risk factor of CSDH of all ages in our study. But medication is more closely related to the incidence of CSDH in group A, than group B.