Efficacy of Voluven vs. Albumin Infusion in Prevention and Treatment of Clinical Vasospasm following Subarachnoid Hemorrhage

Clinical vasospasm following subarachnoid hemorrhage is one of the most important causes of mortality during first two weeks after subarachnoid hemorrhage. Thus, some investigations have been conducted to evaluate the efficacy of triple-H accompanied with other drugs, such as calcium blocker, and early operation. In addition, colloid solutions such as albumin have also been used in treatment of hypervolemia. However, no study has compared different liquids. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of Voluven vs. albumin infusion (as hyper volume therapy) in prevention and treatment of clinical vasospasm following subarachnoid hemorrhage. This double-blind clinical trial that was performed in Alzahra Hospital, Isfahan, Iran, in 2011. We studied 64 patients with aneurysm, subarachnoid hemorrhage who referred to the hospital. The patients were divided into two groups. Early surgery was performed whenever possible and hypertensive hypervolemic hemodilution therapy was instituted with the first sign of clinical vasospasm. The first group was treated by albumin and the second group by Voluven liquids. Both groups were followed-up for 2 weeks. Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and Hunt-Hess Grade (HHG) were used for daily assessments of neurologic status, neurologic deficit, and hemodynamic status of the patients. Finally, the collected data was analyzed by SPSS. According to the results of this study, no statistically significant differences in the trend of GCS and HHG were observed between the two groups during follow-up (P > 0.05). There were not any significant differences between the two groups in terms of treatment results and complications. However, Voluven is cheaper than albumin. Therefore, Voluven can be efficiently used for prevention and treatment of clinical vasospasm following subarachnoid hemorrhage.