Relationship between enlargement of traumatic intracerebral hematoma and irregular rate of hematoma morphous

Objective To study the relationship between incidence and time course of traumatic intracerebral hematoma enlargement and that between hematoma irregular rate (IR) and hematoma enlargement after brain injury. Methods After brain injury, 164 cases with traumatic supratentorial intracerebral hematoma were examined by cranial CT scan within 72 hours and reexamined 120 hours after so as to compare the hematoma volums (V 1 and V 2) and analyze the relation between hematoma IR and hematoma enlargement. Results After brain injury, enlargement of hematoma was confirmed in 70 cases (42.7%), in which the cutpoint for hematoma enlargement was determined as V 2/V 1 = 1.45 by using receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC). Hematoma IR had positive correlation with hematoma enlargement ( r=0.857,P0.01). Conclusions Since the incidence of traumatic hematoma enlargement is high, we can tell the possibility of hematoma enlargement based on hematoma IR in order to make a timely reexamination of CT scan and apply active treatments.