The Ottawa Subarachnoid Haemorrhage (SAH) Rule is a clinical decision tool to facilitate
identification of subarachnoid haemorrhage in alert, neurologically intact adults
admitted to the Emergency Department (ED) with acute non-traumatic headache. It was
developed by Perry et al. on the basis of data derived from a multicentre cohort study
in Canada [
[1]
]. It takes into account clinical features that were deemed high risk for SAH, including
age ≥ 40, neck pain/stiffness, witnessed loss of consciousness, onset during exertion,
thunderclap headache and limited neck flexion on examination. It had been originally
purported that the tool had the potential to reduce investigation rates by approximately
10–20% [
[2]
]. We performed an up-to-date review of the literature and present a summary of the
current evidence base for the validity and usefulness of the Ottawa SAH Rule.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- Clinical decision rules to rule out subarachnoid hemorrhage for acute headache.JAMA. Sep 25 2013; 310: 1248-1255
- High risk clinical characteristics for subarachnoid haemorrhage in patients with acute headache: prospective cohort study.BMJ. Oct 28 2010; 341c5204
- External validation of the Ottawa subarachnoid hemorrhage clinical decision rule in patients with acute headache.Am J Emerg Med. Feb 2015; 33: 244-249
- New clinical decision rule to exclude subarachnoid haemorrhage for acute headache: a prospective multicentre observational study.BMJ Open. Sep 9 2016; 6e010999
- Validation of the Ottawa Subarachnoid Hemorrhage Rule in patients with acute headache.CMAJ. Nov 13 2017; 189: E1379-E1385
- Applying the Ottawa subarachnoid haemorrhage rule on a cohort of emergency department patients with headache.Eur J Emerg Med. Dec 5 2017; ([Epub ahead of print])
- Information submitted to Health Education England workforce planning and education commissioning round – 2015/16.RCR, London2016: 8-10
Article Info
Publication History
Published online: May 10, 2018
Accepted:
May 9,
2018
Received:
May 8,
2018
Identification
Copyright
Crown Copyright © 2018 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
