Cerebral amyloid angiopathy: incidence and complications in the aging brain. I. Cerebral hemorrhage.

The clinical and pathologic findings in eleven patients with fatal cerebral hemorrhages related to cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) are described. The hemorrhages were bihemispheric, though not necessarily of simultaneous onset in four patients, and favoured the fronto-parietal cortex and white matter in ten patients. Dissection into the subarachnoid space was common. Cerebrovascular lesions or cardiomegaly related to hypertension coexisted with those of CAA in three cases. Seven patients were not demented prior to the ictus. Ten of eleven brains contained abundant senile plaques and/or neurofibrillary tangles, whether or not the patient had been clinically demented. In the elderly, CAA is an important etiologic consideration for cerebral hemorrhage, especially if the hemorrhage occurs in a peripheral location in the brain and is superimposed on a history of dementia.