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%).