Abstract-Objective:To characterize long-term mortality following intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) in two large population-based cohorts assembled more than a decade apart. Methods: All patients age Ն18 hospitalized with nontraumatic ICH in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area were identified during 1988 (Cohort 1) and from May 1998 to July 2001 and August 2002 to April 2003. Mortality was tabulated using actuarial methods and compared with a log-rank test. Results: There were 183 patients with ICH in Cohort 1 and 1,041 patients in Cohort 2. Patients in Cohort 1 were more likely to be white (p ϭ 0.024) and undergo operation for their ICH (p ϭ 0.002), whereas patients in Cohort 2 were more commonly on anticoagulants (p Ͻ 0.001). Among patients in Cohort 1, mortality at 7 days, 1 year, and 10 years was 31, 59, and 82%. Among patients in Cohort 2, mortality at 7 days and 1 year was 34 and 53%. Mortality rates did not differ between cohorts by log-rank test (p ϭ 0.259). Conclusions: Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) mortality did not improve significantly between study periods. Operation for ICH became less frequent, whereas anticoagulant-associated ICH became more common. NEUROLOGY 2006;66:1182-1186 Recent investigations into the surgical and medical management of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) prove that large-scale clinical trials for this condition are feasible and provide hope that new treatments may improve patient outcomes.1,2 Outside of clinical trials, changes in medical practice and the natural history of disease are ideally documented in population-based studies that capture all disease cases within a defined community. To date, most population-based studies of ICH outcome have been small and racially homogeneous.3 Limited sample size has precluded analysis of some predictors of ICH outcome, such as location of hemorrhage and anticoagulant use in most of these studies.3,4 Furthermore, whereas short-term mortality following ICH is known to be high, the pattern of long-term mortality following ICH and recent trends in ICH mortality have not been well documented. 3 We present a population-based study of ICH outcome, including long-term mortality data, stratification by location of hemorrhage, and a comparison of two large ICH cohorts assembled more than a decade apart.Methods. Two ICH cohorts from the five-county Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area (GCNK) were tracked for this study. Cohort 1 was assembled from January 1988 through December 1988 and has been the subject of previous reports. Factors for Hemorrhagic Stroke (GERFHS) study, an ongoing population-based study of ICH and subarachnoid hemorrhage in the GCNK region. 7 The methodology of the GERFHS study has been previously described.
7,8The current study includes all hospitalized cases of ICH that occurred in persons age Ն18 within the five GCNK metropolitan counties during the prescribed periods. For both cohorts, cases were identified by retrospective review of primary and secondary International Classification of Diseases-9 (ICD-9) codes...