Intracranial Aneurysm Surgery among the Hispanic Puerto Rican Population: A 25-Year Single-Surgeon Experience

This study aimed to describe a cohort of Hispanic Puerto Rican patients with intracranial aneurysms who underwent surgery by a single surgeon at an academic center over a 25-year period.

A retrospective study was performed using the electronic database of the Neurosurgery Program at the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus, to identify patients whom the author operated on for the treatment of an intracranial aneurysm from 1996 through 2020. The study included all Hispanic patients who underwent open surgical treatment for an intracranial aneurysm by the author during the study period.

Over 25 years, 255 patients underwent surgery for the treatment of intracranial aneurysms. Seventy-one percent of patients were female and 29% were male, with a female-to-male ratio of 2.4:1. The median age was 55 years (interquartile range, 46-65 years). Eighty-seven percent of the patients had surgery for a ruptured aneurysm and 13% for an unruptured aneurysm. The most frequent locations for the aneurysms were the anterior communicating artery (33.3%) and the posterior communicating artery (32.5%). Anterior communicating artery aneurysms were more frequent in men, whereas posterior communicating artery aneurysms were more frequent in women. Postoperative rebleeding from an unclipped or a partially clipped aneurysm was significantly associated with death.

In this single-surgeon surgical cohort from Puerto Rico, there was a substantial female predominance among patients with intracranial aneurysms. More than half of the patients treated for aneurysms were aged 50-69 years.