ABSTRACT
Age The age of the patient should play a role in the decision-making process. Treatment morbidity and mortality is clearly higher in patients over the age of 50 years with unruptured aneurysms larger than 12 mm treated by microsurgical techniques than those treated by endovascular techniques. For those patients over the age of 70 years with unruptured aneurysms, a poor outcome is seen 35 % of the time regardless of the size of the aneurysm, poor outcome being defined at 1 year as death, a Rankin score of 3-5, or impaired cognitive status. 2 However, a similar impact of age on outcome was not observed in the ISAT trial, leaving unclear the answer to the question of the impact of age on treatment technique for patients harboring ruptured aneurysms. 1 Most likely the influence of the neurological devastation incurred by the patient secondary to the rupture of the aneurysm is at least as powerful as the influence of age and the treatment technique.
