[Postmortem examination of patients with non-surgically treated ruptured aneurysms (author's transl)]

The is no doubt that radical surgery has been successful in preserving the lives of patients with ruptured aneurysms. On the other hand, no matter how successful we have been we cannot and must not forget the patients who died without undergoing surgery. Therefore, we investigated from clinical course, laboratory work, including angiography and autopsy, 38 cases who died during hospitalization in order to elucidate the causes of death in the natural course and to find the possibilities of minnimizing the number of non-operative fatalies. We classified the causes of death into 3 groups: intracranial hemmatomas, brain ischemia due to vasospasm, and aggravation of the general condition. From the study, it was concluded that most of the lives could have been saved, if appropriate diagnosis and treatment had been made as soon as possible after the initial hemorrhage.