Early Minimally Invasive Image Guided Endoscopic Evacuation of Intracerebral Haemorrhage (EMINENT-ICH)

Spontaneous supratentorial intracerebral haemorrhage (SSICH) is the second most common form of stroke and accounts for approximately 2500 cases in Switzerland annually. The prognosis is very poor with nearly half of the patients dying within one year after haemorrhage. Treatment options for SSICH consist of either the current gold standard, best medical treatment (BMT), or surgical hematoma evacuation. Neither the best medical treatment nor the established surgical mainstay (conventional craniotomy) have shown relevant improvement of survival or functional outcome rates. A minimal invasive approach with early image-guided endoscopic surgery conducted within 24 hours after bleeding onset is therefore proposed. Endoscopic surgery was shown to be safe and effective, however large trials analyzing the benefits of endoscopic surgery are lacking. An earlier, more complete and more rapid hematoma evacuation could improve the functional outcome and mortality rates in affected patients. The primary objective of this two-armed, open-labelled, single centre randomised controlled trial is to show superiority of early minimally invasive image-guided hematoma evacuation additionally to BMT compared to BMT alone in improving functional outcome rates at 6 months in patients with SSICH. The study procedures include 6 visits in total, 4 of them during hospital stay, 2 of them as follow-up visits within the clinical routine. Each visit consists of assessing Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), modified Rankin Scale (mRS) and National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), three visits include CT scans (before intervention, directly postoperative and during follow up) and blood sampling (before intervention, postoperative and during follow up). Three visits include assessing patient satisfaction and cognition, and two visits include patient quality of life assessments. This study was designed in collaboration with Patient and Public representatives.