Think of your brain as a bustling city, with blood flowing through its streets. But sometimes, there’s a danger lurking – an unruptured intracranial aneurysm (UIA), like a hidden pothole waiting to cause trouble. But fear not! Scientists have discovered that a medication called methylprednisolone can help prevent postoperative bleeding (PB) after treatment with a flow diverter (FD). This is great news because PB can come in the form of subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracerebral hemorrhage, or ventricular bleeding, and it’s important to minimize these risks. In a retrospective study of UIA patients, those who received methylprednisolone had a significantly lower incidence of PB compared to those who didn’t. Even after considering other factors that could contribute to PB, like gender and aneurysm size, methylprednisolone still showed a protective effect. This suggests that methylprednisolone could be a potential method to prevent PB after FD treatment. Exciting, right? If you’re interested in learning more about this research and how it can benefit brain aneurysm patients, check out the full article!

Background and objectivesRegarding the anti-inflammatory effect, methylprednisolone is a candidate to prevent patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysms (UIAs) from postoperative bleeding (PB) after flow diverter (FD) treatment. This study aimed to investigate whether methylprednisolone is related to a lower incidence of PB after FD treatment for UIAs.MethodsThis study retrospectively reviewed UIA patients receiving FD treatment between October 2015 and July 2021. All patients were observed until 72  h after FD treatment. The patients receiving methylprednisolone (80  mg, bid, for at least 24 h) were considered as standard methylprednisolone treatment (SMT) users, otherwise as non-SMT users. The primary endpoint indicated the occurrence of PB, including subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracerebral hemorrhage, and ventricular bleeding, within 72 h after FD treatment. This study compared the incidence of PB between SMT users and non-SMT users and investigated the protective effect of SMT on PB after FD treatment using the Cox regression model. Finally, after controlling the potential factors related to PB, we performed subgroup analysis to further confirm the protective effect of SMT on PB.ResultsThis study finally included 262 UIA patients receiving FD treatment. PB occurred in 11 patients (4.2%), and 116 patients (44.3%) received SMT postoperatively. The median time from the end of surgery to PB was 12.3 h (range: 0.5–48.0 h). SMT users had a lower incidence of PB comparing with non-SMT users (1/116, 0.9% vs. 10/146, 6.8%, respectively; p = 0.017). The multivariate Cox analysis demonstrated that SMT users (HR, 0.12 [95%CI, 0.02–0.94], p = 0.044) had a lower risk of PB postoperatively. After controlling the potential factors related to PB (i.e., gender, irregular shape, surgical methods [FD and FD + coil] and UIA sizes), the patients receiving SMT still had a lower cumulative incidence of PB, comparing with patients receiving non-SMT (all p < 0.05).ConclusionSMT was correlated with the lower incidence of PB for patients receiving FD treatment and may be a potential method to prevent PB after the FD treatment.

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