View source for 10B. Intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH)

Intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) refers to haemorrhage into the brain parenchyme. It’s one form of haemorrhagic stroke.

We can distinguish two usual presentations of ICH. The typical presentation is in an elderly patient with hypertension, who has haemorrhage in deep brain structures, like basal ganglia, thalamus, pons, and/or cerebellum. This occurs due to rupture of microaneurysms in the brain which occur due to chronic hypertension. This is the most common presentation.

The other presentation is the atypical one, which occurs in younger or normotensive patients, who rather have haemorrhage in the cortical lobes. This occurs due to rupture of vascular malformations, coagulation disorders, or due to cerebral amyloid angiopathy.

The prognosis is poor, 50% of patients die within 30 days.