Objectives: Surgical treatment is expected to remove clot immediately in acute spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (SICH) patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether Naoxueshu could enhance the efficacy of clot removal surgery in acute SICH patients.
Methods: One hundred twenty patients who had been diagnosed as SICH according to neuroimaging were enrolled in this study. They received craniotomy, decompressive craniectomy, or minimally invasive surgical evacuation as appropriate and then were randomized into two groups: the Naoxueshu group (NXS group, n = 60) and the control group (n = 60). All the patients received standard medical management while patients in NXS group also took Naoxueshu oral liquid 10 ml with three times a day for seven consecutive days. The primary outcome was the 7-day hematoma volume and secondary outcomes were 7-day National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score and 7-day cerebral edema score.
Results: After clot removal surgery, hematoma volume in NXS group (9.5 ± 8.0) was significantly decreased than that in Control group (21.3 ± 22.9, p < .0001) 7 days after surgery. Moreover, cerebral edema was also relieved after 7-day's Naoxueshu treatment (2.5 ± 0.9 vs. 2.9 ± 0.7, p = .043). Since patients in NXS group had worse baseline NIHSS score (17.2 ± 8.1 vs. 13.7 ± 10.1, p = .039), it was reasonable to conclude that Naoxueshu treatment could improve patients' neurological function because 7-day NIHSS score of the two groups was similar.
Conclusion: Naoxueshu oral liquid could relieve hematoma volume and cerebral edema after clot removal surgery in acute SICH patients. Moreover, it had the potential to improve patients' short-term neurological function.
Keywords: hematoma; intracerebral hemorrhage; surgery; traditional Chinese medicine.
© 2020 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.