DIABETES INSIPIDUS FOLLOWING CLOSED HEAD INJURY

Abstract

Diabetes insipidus is a rare disease and it is a very uncommon sequel of head injury. Fitz (1914) found that the incidence of the disease attributable to any cause was fourteen cases per hundred thousand admissions to a general hospital, and Rowntree (1924) found thirteen cases per hundred thousand admissions to the Mayo Clinic. Rabino- witch (1921) found one case of diabetes insipidus* among fifty thousand admissions to a general hospital. In only two of fifty-six cases reported by Rowntree- (1924) and two, or possibly three, of forty-two cases reported by Jones (1944) was the diabetes insipidus due to head injury. Rand and Patterson (1937) have stressed the rarity of post- traumatic diabetes insipidus by stating that no case occurred in one hundred and fifty thousand admissions to a neurosurgical unit.