Clinical Analysis of 20 Patients of Brain Abscess Who were Treated by Streotactic Aspiration or Craniotomy

Ha, Ji-Soo; Park, Se-Hyuck; Lee, Jong-Young; Cho, Byung-Moon; Oh, Sae-Moon

Original article

Journal of the Korean Society of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery 2012;8(2):62-69.
Published online September 30, 2012.

Clinical Analysis of 20 Patients of Brain Abscess Who were Treated by Streotactic Aspiration or Craniotomy

Ji-Soo Ha, Se-Hyuck Park, Jong-Young Lee, Byung-Moon Cho, Sae-Moon Oh

Department of Neurosurgery, Hallym University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Abstract

Objective
The aim of this study was to investigate prognosis factors of brain abscess and evaluate the efficacy of stereotactic aspiration compared to craniotomy with abscess excision.
Methods
We retrospectively analyzed 20 patients of brain abscess who were treated by aspiration or excision in our institute between January 1991 and June 2011. The patients were divided into two groups according to surgical modality, craniotomy with abscess excision group and stereotactic aspiration group. We investigated symptoms, pathogens, hospitalization time, duration of prescribing antibiotics and underlying diseases with baseline characteristics Result: The mean age of cerebral abscess patients was 45.9 years, and main clinical symptom was headache. The cases with early detected causative pathogens showed good prognosis. However, the cases that have underlying diseases had poor results. We did not find out the difference in the prognosis between the stereotactic aspiration and craniotomy and abscess removal.
Conclusion
With development of stereotactic surgical technique, we can manage brain abscess safely, minimally invasively and effectively. Therefore stereotactic aspiration could be a choice of treatment for brain abscess. Even though size of lesion is small, aspiration technique can improve a progress of brain abscess.

Key Words: Cerebral abscess, Stereotactic aspiration.