Initial Treatment Strategy for Intracranial Mycotic Aneurysms: 2 Case Reports and Literature Review

Intracranial mycotic aneurysm (IMA) is a rare neurovascular disease and a well-known complication after infective endocarditis. IMAs potentially carry a high mortality risk resulting from intracranial hemorrhage. Therefore, initial treatment is crucial for IMA patients, but an optimal treatment strategy remains unknown. Herein, we report 1 cases of IMA patients treated with the current usual modalities, and we provide a comprehensive literature review to propose an optimal initial treatment strategy for IMAs.

Case 1: An 80-year-old man received a diagnosis of ruptured IMA. He immediately underwent trapping surgery and was discharged without neurologic deficit. Case 2: A 36-year-old man with previous aortic root replacement received a diagnosis of ruptured IMA. His general condition was considered too unstable to allow him to undergo direct surgery, and the angiographic access route was limited because of the previous aortic replacement surgery. Therefore, we selected conservative therapy; however, the patient subsequently died after complications from a huge intracerebral hemorrhage during medical treatment.

On the basis of 129 IMA cases across 54 reports published from 2006 to 2016, we propose initial surgical intervention as an optimal treatment for patients with ruptured, and even unruptured, IMAs. Regarding surgical intervention, there was no significant difference in postoperative modified Rankin scale scores between direct surgery and endovascular treatment. By contrast, because antibiotic treatment significantly decreased IMA size in unruptured IMAs, antibiotic treatment might be a reasonable alternative for patients with unruptured IMAs, depending on the patient's situation.