Subdural Hygroma in Head Trauma Patients Admitted to a Hospital in Northern Iran

Post-traumatic subdural hygroma can be associated with subdural or epidural hematoma. It is usually silent with mild symptoms and often disappears spontaneously needing no treatment. In this study, we investigated the clinical characteristics of subdural hygroma in patients with traumatic brain injury.
Methods & Materials/Patients: In a cross-sectional study, data of 3244 patients with head injury admitted to Poursina hospital were collected through a questionnaire which included variables of age, sex, GCS on admission, mechanism of trauma, accompanying cranial injuries and treatments, unilateral/bilateral hygroma, and size, volume, and location of hygroma. Finally, the data were analyzed using SPSS (version 19) and descriptive statistics.
In this study, 81.8% of patients were men and 18.2% women with mean age of 60.91±26.07 years old. Accident was the most common cause (63.6%) and the severity of head injury was mild in majority of patients (63.6%) according to GCS. The average time of diagnosis was 10.4 days after the head injury was located in frontal (36.4%) and fronto-parietal (36.4%) areas in most patients. Most of the accompanying cranial injuries were brain contusion (36.4%) and subarachnoid hemorrhage (27.3%). The majority of patients (81.8%) underwent conservative treatment and showed a favorable outcome (63.6%).
Most of the times, subdural hygroma is observed in older people and disappears over time with vanishing clinical symptoms. Most cases have to undergo conservative treatment.