The blood leukocyte count and its prognostic significance in subarachnoid hemorrhage.

This study reviews the white blood cell count in 75 patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage and correlates it with the clinical grade at admission, the outcome, the presence of angiographic spasm and blood clots in the cisternal spaces. Patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage with normal angiograms usually have slow white cell count and favourable outcome. In patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage due to ruptured aneurysms, their'is a clear correlation between the cell count and the entity of the cisternal hemorrhage and arterial spasm. Whereas the cell count is fairly correlated with the clinical grade at admission, a cell count exceeding 20,000 in associated with a 90% rate of poor outcome, even in patients with low clinical grade at admission. Therefore the count of the white blood cells seems to have high prognostic value in predicting the neurological deterioration due to arterial spasm.