Chronic subdural hemorrhage (SDH) will earn its place as the most common adult brain condition that requires neurosurgical intervention in the U.S. by 2030, according to a new NYU Langone Medical Center study.
The findings were published online in the Journal of Neurosurgery. Researchers analyzed data from U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) hospital visits where SDHs were diagnosed, civilian SDH rates from Finland and Japan. They then created a mathematical model. The model took age, gender and alcohol consumption into consideration and was used to predict the rate of SDH between 2012 and 2040.
The researchers uncovered that from 2000 to 2012, 695 new incidents of SDHs were identified at VA and 29 percent needed a surgical procedure, which equates to 79.4 SDHs per 100,000 patients. Notably, 70 percent of the SDHs were identified in patients who were 65 years or older.
Since the population is steadily aging the researchers concluded that by 2030 when 25 percent of people will be over 65 years old, chronic SDH will account for about 121.4 cases per 100,000 people in the VA population and 17.6 per 100,000 in the general U.S. population.
Additionally, they found that patients that require surgery for SDH are more likely to have long hospital stays, even longer than patients surgically treated for brain tumors, because they require more intensive physical therapy and rehabilitation. According to the researchers, the findings allude to the fact that the medical community might have to dedicate more health care resources to prevent and manage SDH.
“If we can identify patients at risk and prevent brain atrophy from occurring as Americans age, we may be able to slow this trend,” Dr. Uzma Samadani, chief of neurosurgery at New York Harbor Health Care System and assistant professor in the departments of neurosurgery, psychiatry, neuroscience and physiology at NYU Langone, said in a statement. “If not, we are going to need increased neurosurgical and rehabilitation capacity to manage these patients."
