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Finding silent cerebral aneurysms: the importance of doing nothing

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor Michael Brainin
Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Clinical Medicine and Prevention, Donau-Universität Krems, Dr. Karl Dorrekstrasse 30, 3500 Krems, Austria; michael.brainin@donau-uni.ac.at

Keywords: asymptomatic cerebral aneurysm; cerebral aneurysm; outcome research; quality of life

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Doing nothing can be a good treatment option whose value is often not appreciated in clinical medicine. The importance of weighing the possibilities, having a second look at the lab test or at an imaging result, and finally suggesting to the patient that they should wait, is not easily understood. To refrain from performing a therapeutic procedure can appear to the patient or their relatives as not giving enough attention to a specific complaint or condition, sometimes even as outright carelessness or negligence. This is because medicine, in its most modern technological sense, embraces the myth of the medical doctor as an activist, hurrying to perform an urgent operation or implant a vital device.

Today, coiling and clipping are the best surgical therapies in unruptured small cerebral aneurysms, but the merits of such intervention have to be measured by the notable risks involved in such interventions. One large, . . . [Full text of this article]

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