[Treatment of post-traumatic cerebrospinal fluid rhinorrhea with lumbar drainage (author's transl)]

Three patients with CSF-rhinorrhea following frontobasal skull and brain injury were treated with lumbar CSF drainage. Rhinorrhea was successfully stopped in one patient few hours after onset of the drainage while a pneumatocephalus developed in each of the remaining patients during the first post-trauma week. We believe that this latter occurrence was due to depression of intra-cranial pressure as a result of the drainage. As a further consequence of this, risk of intracranial infection increased in association with a hypoliquorrhea, and led to a tentorial pressure cone in one of the patients.