Treatment approaches
The most common treatment approach was a combined ENT and neurosurgical
intervention (16/39, 41%) followed by an ENT procedure alone (15/39,
38.5%) (Table 3, Table 4). The remaining patients were managed with
neurosurgical only drainage (4/39, 10.2%) or conservative treatment
(3/39, 10.2%). The most common ENT operation was antral washout (28/39,
72%) followed by frontal trephine surgery (9/39, 23%) and endoscopic
sinus drainage (6/39, 15%). A craniotomy was performed in 15 (38%) and
burr holes placed in 5 (12.8%). No significant changes in the treatment
approaches were observed after mid-point of recruitment period (2010).
Table 5 summarises the comparisons of the key clinical characteristics
between the main treatment groups. Although no statistically significant
findings were detected, the size of intracranial abscess was found to be
smallest in the ENT only group (median 5.5mm). Patients treated by
combined neurosurgery and ENT interventions had the largest proportion
of patients with SDE (13/16, 81.3%).