Caudate hemorrhage: clinical features, neuropsychological assessments and radiological findings.

The nucleus caudatus is not a common location of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage. Twelve patients (8 men and 4 women) aged 38-76 years who had caudate hemorrhage between November 1, 1992 and March 31, 1994 were evaluated. These cases represented 2.1% of intracerebral hemorrhage cases at Neurological Institute, Veterans General Hospital-Taipei, Taiwan. Cerebral angiography was performed on eight patients. Six patients were evaluated by an extensive neuropsychological battery. The most frequent symptoms of caudate hemorrhage were headache and/or vomiting, and decreased consciousness. Clinical features were similar to those of subarachnoid hemorrhage. Angiography showed characteristic moyamoya disease in one patient but did not show an aneurysm or arteriovenous malformation in any patient. The etiology in most patients was hypertension. Neuropsychological assessments showed significant impairment in tasks of short-term and long-term memory and in verbal fluency as well as trends of impairment of orientation rather than of controls. Neurobehavioral symptoms probably resulted from interruption of the cortical-subcortical loops between the caudate nucleus and prefrontal cortex.