CEREBRAL VENOUS THROMBOSIS - STUDY OF OUT COME

The management of patients with presumed cerebral venous thrombosis ha s been recently modified by magnetic resonance imaging and evidence th at heparin decreases mortality and morbidity. No large consecutive ser ies of patients with cerebral venous thrombosis has been reported sinc e then. The aim of our study was to determine the prognosis factors of patients with cerebral venous thrombosis. Demographic, clinical and r adiological characteristics were recorded in a homogeneous series of 1 8 consecutive patients with cerebral venous thrombosis collected over a 31-month period. All patients were treated by heparin at the acute s tage. We found no difference in demographic, clinical and radiological characteristics of the patients according to the 1-month and 6-month outcome. We only found a tendancy towards a better 1-month outcome in younger patients (p=0.06) and in patients with an isolated intracrania l hypertension (2p=0.06). A long therapeutic delay might be a factor o f poor prognosis which might be hidden by a better spontaneous outcome in patients with isolated intracranial hypertension in whom the diagn ostic delay is longer. A multicentric study allowing a multivariate an alysis may therefore be useful to identify prognosis factors in patien ts with cerebral venous thrombosis.