Manual stereotactic aspiration of spontaneous deep-seated intracerebral haematomas in non-comatose patients

Manual stereotactic aspiration was used in 46 consecutive non-comatose patients with haematomas within the basal ganglia and the results were compared with those obtained in a similar group of 39 patients who were treated purely medically in another hospital. The operation was performed in the subacute stage, and in most cases three target-points were chosen on the scan with the largest expansion of the haematoma. The haematoma was manually aspirated with a syringe device in different depths in regard to the target-points, and mean proportion aspirated was 90.2%. The level of consciousness improved markedly and GCS scores after stereotactic surgery were significantly higher than those after medical treatment ( p