Minimally Invasive Surgery for Intracerebral Hemorrhage: An Updated Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Background and Purpose Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) has been evaluated in numerous clinical trials. Although meta-analyses for this strategy have been performed in the past, recent trials add important information to results of the comparison and permit strategy-specific analyses, including evaluation of endoscopic evacuation and stereotactic thrombolysis. Methods Major scientific databases including but not limited to Pubmed, the CENTRAL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, the ICTRP (International Clinical Trials Registry Platform), the Internet Stroke Center, and the CNKI (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure) were searched in October of 2017 for randomized controlled trials of MIS treatment of supratentorial spontaneous ICH. The primary outcome was defined as death or dependence at the end of follow-up, and the secondary outcome was defined as death. Results The initial search yielded 958 reports, which were reduced to 15 high-quality randomized controlled trials involving 2152 patients. We analyzed odds ratios for MIS overall, endoscopic surgery, and stereotactic thrombolysis compared with conventional treatment, including medical treatment and conventional craniotomy. The odds ratio and CIs of the primary and secondary outcomes were 0.46 (0.36-0.57) and 0.59 (0.45-0.76) for MIS versus conventional treatment; 0.40 (0.25-0.66) and 0.37 (0.20-0.67) for endoscopic surgery versus conventional treatment; 0.47 (0.34-0.65) and 0.76 (0.56-1.04) for stereotactic thrombolysis versus conventional treatment; and 0.44 (0.29-0.67) and 0.56 (0.37-0.84) for MIS versus craniotomy. We also conducted subgroup analyses focusing on time to evacuation for MIS versus conventional treatment and found 0.36 (0.22-0.59) and 0.59 (0.34-1.00) for evacuations performed within 24 hours and 0.49 (0.38-0.63) and 0.57 (0.43-0.76) for evacuations performed within 72 hours. Conclusions This meta-analysis demonstrates that select patients with supratentorial ICH benefit from MIS over other treatments. This beneficial effect remains true when analyzing specific techniques and evacuation timing subgroups.