Minor head injury is a frequent cause for neurologic consultation in the emergency room. Most patients with minor head injury will make an uneventful recovery, but in a very small proportion of these patients life threatening intracranial complications requiring neurosurgical intervention do occur [1]-[3]. An interesting subgroup are patients with minor head injury who are on anticoagulant therapy. The NICE guidelines state it is most likely safe to discharge these patients if imaging is normal [4].
A guideline from the Dutch Neurology Association recommends clinical observation for at least 24 hours, even with normal findings on initial head CT [5]. In our experience, many Dutch clinicians feel that this is probably too strict and tend to deviate from this recommendation. Here we describe a patient on anticoagulant therapy who developed a subdural hematoma several hours after admission for minor head injury.