What determines how badly or how well patients do after an aneurysm leak?
Basically it’s the amount of blood leakage that happens. Generally speaking, the more blood that spills into the brain compartment, the more dangerous it is. Physicians grade so called sub-arachnoid hemorrhages into various levels. They use 2 different ways to grade the amount of bleeding. The first is called the Hunt+Hess scale and is based upon the level of consciousness that a patient exhibits after a leak. Grade 1 is a very mild leak. Grade 5 is a very severe leak. This is more commonly used since it is more accurate and does not depend on any fancy tests, just a thourogh physical exam.
