Ramadan Fasting and Intracerebral Hematoma: Incidence and Outcomes

Background and Objectives: Fasting over a prescribed period of time is a common religious tradition practiced by several prominent faiths in the world. It is also currently regaining interest as a medical practice, both as preventive and as therapy and/or simple choice of lifestyle. For the first time, we evaluate how Ramadan (an Islamic month) fasting can influence the incidence of intracerebral hematoma and its outcome.

Methods: 69 patients with primary intracerebral hemorrhage enrolled in this study, 32 patients were enrolled during Ramadan (18 patients were fasting, 14 patients were not fasting) and 37 patients were enrolled one month later (Shawal) which is not a mandatory fasting month among Muslims. All patients were admitted to Neurology department, Mansoura university hospital. The clinical characteristics and mortality during hospital admission were noticed. They were all assessed using routine lab, CT brain, “National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale” (NIHSS) and “Modified Rankin Scale” (mRS).

Results: About 22 percentage of fasting patients with intracerebral hematoma died, 28.6% non-fasting patients died and 20.5% of patients died in the month after Ramadan without significant difference among the three groups (ρ>0.05). Also regarding NIHSS, hematoma expansion and mRS, there was no statistically significant difference among the three groups (ρ>0.05).

Conclusion: Ramadan fasting showed neither protective effect nor worsening as regard incidence or bad impact on patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage.