Ketamine for empiric treatment of cortical spreading depolarization after subdural hematoma evacuation.

Background: It is widely known that some patients surgically treated for subdural hematoma (SDH) experience neurologic deficits not clearly explained by the acute brain injury or known sequelae like seizures. There is increasing evidence that cortical spreading depolarization (CSD) may be the cause. A recent article demonstrated that CSD occurred at a rate of 15 % and was associated with neurological deterioration in a subset of patients following chronic subdural hematoma evacuation.