gms | German Medical Science

57th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Neurosurgery
Joint Meeting with the Japanese Neurosurgical Society

German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)

11 - 14 May, Essen

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Cognitive and behavioural deficits due to subarachnoid hemorrhage of the anterior communicating artery (acoa-syndrome)

Kognitive Defizite und Verhaltensauffälligkeiten nach aneurysmatischer Subarachnoidalblutung aus einem Aneurysma der Arteria communicans anterior

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  • corresponding author V. Völzke - Klinik Holthausen Hattingen
  • L. Wischnjak - Klinik Holthausen Hattingen
  • W. Ischebeck - Klinik Holthausen Hattingen

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. Japanische Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. 57. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie e.V. (DGNC), Joint Meeting mit der Japanischen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. Essen, 11.-14.05.2006. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2006. DocFR.10.06

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/dgnc2006/06dgnc064.shtml

Published: May 8, 2006

© 2006 Völzke et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Objective: Following successful neurosurgical therapy, patients with frontal subarachnoid haemorrhage (anterior communicating artery) produce different cognitive and behavioural deficits during rehabilitation. Just a few rehabilitation data concerning this point have been published before. We want to present a retrospective analysis of our rehabilitation data.

Methods: 60 testable patients (28 male and 32 female) with a mean age of 46 years completed a neuropsychological assessment battery (memory, attention, visual perception, executive processes). Some patients (n=30) completed a test battery for a second time after finishing the rehabilitation.

Results: On the average, the rehabilitation started 5 weeks post -operation (clipping or coiling). 65 percent of the patients were found to have memory deficits. The reaction time (alertness) was below average in 47%, a deficit in a selective attention task (GoNogo) was observed in 54% and in a divided attention task we assessed severe deficits in 74% of the patients. Patients with left and right frontal lesions showed constructive deficits (30%), deficits in arithmetic (32%) deficits in a spatial executive task (30%) and in a planning task (63%). In addition, we observed signs of severe anosognosia for cognitive deficits and behavioural deficits (e.g. inadequate social communication). The individual rehabilitation course took the patients' cognitive profile of deficits and abilities into consideration. We observed a significant improvement measured by t-tests in all tested areas.

Conclusions: Because of the central role of the frontal region (e.g. supervisory attentional system), an early planning of the individualised and successful rehabilitation process is necessary.