The Incidence of Cerebral Venous Thrombosis

The incidence of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) is estimated at 0.2 to 0.5 per 100 000 per year. One estimate was derived from an extrapolation of mortality and autopsy data from studies performed several decades ago. Kalbag and Woolf provide mortality figures from the British Registrar General. From 1952 to 1961 an average of 21.7 deaths from CVT were reported annually in a population of 56 million (0.39 deaths per million). The mortality of CVT probably varied between 20% and 50%. This gives an incidence of approximately 0.1 to 0.2 cases per 100 000. These indirectly calculated incidence rates are inaccurate, especially because improved neuroimaging has shown that, unlike previously believed, CVT often has a benign course. Other studies give estimates of 0.22, 0.34, and 1.23 per 100 000, but in most of these studies, determination of the incidence was not the primary objective. We determined the incidence of CVT among adults in 2 provinces in The Netherlands over a 3-year period by handsearching the medical records of all 19 hospitals in this region.