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A series of 88 patients, who underwent operation for intracranial haemorrhage, is reported. The outcomes are assessed in order to evaluate the operability in relation to the patient's age, the type of onset, the site of haemorrhage, the conscious level, the interval between accident and operation, cardiovascular disease and the dysmetabolic values. A numerical value has been assigned to each factor considered; than the correspondence between these values and the importance of each factor in relation to the clinical state has been analysed. The authors finally point out that their study, although it has a merely indicative significance, agrees sufficiently with the clinical results, as to give a useful pattern for a statistical approach to the question of intracerebral haemorrhage, offering in the meantime hopeful aids to diagnosis.

The authors suggest that some cerebral ischaemic lesions depend upon a transient obstruction of intracranial blood vessels (particularly the trunk and the branches of the middle cerebral artery). This explains (as in the patient described here) the cases in which an ischaemic lesion does not correspond with the vascular lesions found on arteriography and/or at autopsy. Furthermore the authors indicate the importance of blood flow in the spontaneous relief of obstruction which is favoured by an undamaged vascular bed. Consequently they recommend, if possible, early surgical treatment of the carotid lesions, in order to reduce the risk of emboli and to improve cerebral blood flow in general.