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Objective Infections from penetrating brain injuries (PBI) lead to higher morbidity and mortality rates. The results of this research will be evaluated to develop institutional guideline for antibiotic prophylaxis in this patient population. The objective was to characterize the prophylactic antibiotic usage for patients presenting with PBI. Patients and methods This retrospective chart review included patients with a PBI identified through the institution’s trauma center registry between December 2015 and July 2018. The primary outcome was the proportion of patients that received prophylactic antibiotics. Secondary outcomes included antibiotic administration timing, selection and duration of antibiotic regimens, infection rates and patient outcomes. Results The study population included 33 patients, with 82 % males and an average age of 32 years. The most common mechanism of injury was a gunshot wound (94 %). Of the 33 patients, 24 (73 %) received at least one dose of prophylactic antibiotics. The median time to antibiotic administration was 52.8 min (IQR, 18-120), while the median duration of prophylaxis was 24 h (IQR, 7-84). The most common antibiotic regimen was a single cefazolin dose, with the next most common regimen included scheduled ceftriaxone and metronidazole. Overall, there were no documented central nervous system or skin and soft tissue infections during the initial admission, while 4 patients (12 %) were treated for pneumonia. Survivors (67 %) had a median hospital length of stay of 5.8 days. Conclusion The median duration of prophylaxis was shorter than the current data suggesting antibiotics for 5 days; however, there were no documented central nervous system infections, which is less than previously reported in the literature.

Objective Primary CNS Vasculitis (PCNSV) is a rare disease that is often challenging to diagnose. Cerebral angiography and biopsy have been utilized in the diagnostic workup for several decades but limited literature reports on the concordance of findings of angiography and biopsy. The primary objective of this work was to examine how cerebral angiography corresponded with biopsy findings in patients with suspected PCNSV. Patients and methods A total of 128 patients who underwent workup for PCNSV between years 2005–2016 were identified by query of existing neurological surgery and angiography databases at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center (UHCMC) and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF). The primary outcome was to examine the concordance of results between angiography and cerebral biopsy. Secondary outcomes included examining concordance between results of biopsy and other commonly performed tests for diagnosis of PCNSV including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), cerebrospinal fluid white blood cell count (CSF WBC), Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP). Results 128 patients underwent cerebral biopsy for diagnosis of suspected PCNSV. 93 (73%) of these patients also underwent angiography. Of the 34 patients with positive biopsy findings, only 5 also had positive angiography. Positive angiography was not found to be correlated with positive biopsy in our analysis. The only test that was significantly associated with biopsy proven vasculitis was increased CSF WBC count (P = 0.0114). Conclusions PCNSV is a rare disease and often requires multiple tests or procedures to obtain definitive diagnosis. These results suggest that cerebral angiography findings are not associated with biopsy findings and should be used cautiously in the diagnostic work-up of PCNSV.