Surgical Treatment of Verified Intracranial Aneurysms

The problem of treatment of intracranial aneurysms remains complex because of the many factors which must be analyzed in an effort to arrive at a satisfactory appraisal of the results. We do not propose to review the vast literature on the subject of management of intracranial aneurysms by numerous authors, nor do we wish to delve into the problem of conservative versus surgical treatment of verified aneurysms. Comparable series of large unselected groups of patients who have had proved ruptured aneurysms and have been treated by medical means alone cannot be found in the literature, so we do not have a reliable figure for the death rate under these conditions with which to compare the effect of present methods of surgical treatment.

Since physicians have become more aware of aneurysms as a cause of so-called strokes or subarachnoid hemorrhage, an increasing number of patients have been hospitalized for conservative or