There was no statistically significant difference in the frequency or types of traumatic intracranial hemorrhage between patients who had received aspirin prophylaxis and those who had not. The authors conclude that LDA does not increase surgically relevant parenchymal or meningeal bleeding following moderate and minor head injury in patients older than 60 years of age.

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Deep-freeze preservation of autologous bone grafts to reconstruct skull defects after decompressive craniectomy is a useful procedure and has a low revision rate.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is known for its dismal prognosis, though its dependence on patients' readily available RBCs parameters is not fully established. In this work, 170 GBM patients, diagnosed and treated in Soroka University Medical Center (SUMC) over the last 12 years were retrospectively inspected for their survival dependency on pre-operative RBCs parameters. Besides KPS and tumor resection supplemented by oncological treatment, age under 70 (HR = 0.4, 95% CI 0.24-0.65, p = 0.00073), low hemoglobin level (HR = 1.79, 95% CI 1.06-2.99, p = 0.031), and Red Cell Distribution Width (RDW) <14% (HR = 0.57, 95% CI 0.37-0.88, p = 0.018) were found to be prognostic of patients' overall survival in multivariate analysis, accounting for a false discovery rate of < 5% due to multiple hypothesis testing. According to these results, a stratification tree was made, from which a favorable route highlighted a subgroup of nearly 30% of the cohorts' patients whose median overall survival was 21.1 months (95% CI 16.2-27.2)-higher than the established chemo-radiation standard first-line treatment regimen overall median survival average of about 15 months. The beneficial or detrimental effect of RBCs parameters on GBM prognosis and its possible causes is discussed. Keywords: glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), hemoglobin, RDW (red cell distribution width), prognostic factors, overall survival KEY POINTS-GBM resection followed by oncological treatment of patients under the age of 70 with normal hemoglobin level and RDW < 14% enhance patients' survival.-Measures aimed to normalize hemoglobin levels and RDW prior to surgical intervention may be useful in order to improve GBM patients' prognosis.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to describe the clinical characteristics of patients with skull fracture adjacent to a dural venous sinus (DVS) and evaluate the role of CT venography (CTV) in the diagnosis of the effect of this fracture on the involved DVS. METHODS The study comprised patients with vault or skull base fracture adjacent to a DVS who were admitted to 1 medical center during a 2-year period. The medical records were reviewed for the clinical and radiographic characteristics. All patients had undergone CTV to evaluate potential DVS pathology. The clinical and radiological findings of the patients with DVS pathology were compared with those of the patients with normal DVS. The groups were compared using the chi-square and t-tests for categorical and continuous data, respectively. The potential risk for poor outcome among the patients with DVS pathology was also investigated. RESULTS Of 434 patients with skull fractures, 41 (9.4%) had fractures adjacent to a DVS. DVS pathology was detected in 51% of patients (21 of 41 patients). For 9 (43%) patients, obstruction was extraluminal without thrombosis, and 12 (57%) patients had dural sinus thrombosis (DST). In patients with a positive-CTV scan, the severity of injury according to the Glasgow Coma Scale score at presentation was correlated with the presence of DST (p = 0.007). The sensitivity of noncontrast CT (NCCT) for DVS involvement was 38% among the patients with positive-CTV scans. For patients with DVS pathology, poor outcome was correlated with DST (intraluminal), rather than extraluminal obstruction without thrombosis (p = 0.02), and superior sagittal sinus (SSS) involvement (p = 0.05). CONCLUSIONS NCCT is not sensitive enough to detect DVS obstruction in patients with skull fracture adjacent to a DVS, and CTV should be performed in order to rule it out. A correlation was found between the severity of injury and the presence of DST, rather than extraluminal obstruction. The authors' findings suggest that DST and SSS involvement may be indicators of poor outcome in patients with skull fracture adjacent to DVS.