Surgical outcome of traumatic intracranial hematoma at a regional hospitalin Taiwan

Background: To report the experience in the management of 489 consecutive p atients with traumatic intracranial hematoma and determine the prognostic f actors. Methods: All patients were classified into three groups based on the number of operations for each case. A total of 538 operations were performed for evacuation of 720 intracranial hematomas. Results: The most common cause of injury was motor vehicular traffic crashe s (68.7%) and most victims were motorcyclists (40.1%), The most common type of lesion was acute epidural hematoma (31.0%), The overall mortality rate was 9.6%, and the complication rate was 11.2%, Follow-up assessment of 480 patients revealed that 270 (56.2%) patients made a good recovery, 99 (20.6% ) were moderately disabled, 32 (6.7%) were severely disabled, 21 (4.4%) wer e vegetative, and 58 (12.1%) had died. Conclusion: The surgical outcome was significantly correlated with the scor e of the Glasgow Coma Scale, pupillary reactivity, number of operations, an d type of lesion.