BACKGROUND Accurate recognition of stroke symptoms by Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is necessary for timely care of acute stroke patients. We assessed the accuracy of stroke diagnosis by EMS in clinical practice in a major US city. METHODS AND RESULTS Philadelphia Fire Department data were merged with data from a single comprehensive stroke center to identify patients diagnosed with stroke...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Hemorrhagic transformation (HT) is a major complication of intra-arterial (IA) thrombolytic therapy. Identifying significant predictors of hemorrhage after thrombolysis would be useful in guiding patient selection for IA treatment. METHODS Data were collected retrospectively on consecutive patients with acute focal cerebral ischemia within the anterior or posterior circ...

AIM The aim of this paper was to investigate whether the extent of neurological impairment, the location of ischemic lesions due to stroke are associated with the severity of post-stroke depression. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study included 82 patients, who were diagnosed with acute ischemic stroke and post-stroke depression and were admitted to the Neurology Clinic of Cluj-Napoca County Emerg...

The authors evaluated neuron-specific enolase (NSE), S100 calcium-binding protein B (S100B), and heat shock protein 70 (HSP 70) levels and their relationships with in-hospital mortality, Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores, and National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores. In total, 35 patients older than 18 years were presented to our emergency department and were diagnosed with non-tr...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Citicoline (cytidine-5'-diphosphocholine; CDP-choline) may reduce central nervous system ischemic injury by stabilizing cell membranes and reducing free radical generation. A previous dose-comparison trial in patients with acute stroke found that 500 mg of citicoline appeared to improve neurological outcome with minimal side effects. METHODS The current trial was a 33-c...

BACKGROUND A wide variety of racial and ethnic disparities in stroke epidemiology and treatment have been reported. Race-ethnic differences in initial stroke severity may be one important determinant of differences in the outcome after stroke. The overall goal of this study was to move beyond ethnic comparisons in the mean or median severity, and instead investigate ethnic differences in the en...

BACKGROUND Stroke-specific outcome measures and descriptive measures of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are unsuitable for informing decision-makers of the broader consequences of increasing or decreasing funding for stroke interventions. The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) provides a common metric for comparing interventions over multiple dimensions of HRQoL and mortality differential...

BACKGROUND Falls are common after stroke. Simple, clinically practical tools are needed to easily identify patients with stroke who are at risk of falls. The objective of this study was to identify the factors associated with increased fall risk in a poststroke population. METHODS We assessed factors associated with fall risk among poststroke patients. Fall risk was determined through a histo...

Ischemic stroke is amongst the top four causes of mortality and the leading cause of disability in the world. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a high dose memantine on neurological function of patients with ischemic stroke. In a randomized, 2 armed, open-label study, patients with mild to moderate cerebral thromboembolic event (CTEE) who admitted to Imam Hossein Hospital, T...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Initial National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score is highly predictive of outcome after ischemic stroke. We examined whether grouping strokes by presence of individual NIHSS symptoms could provide prognostic information additional or alternative to the NIHSS total score. METHODS Ischemic strokes from the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Stroke Study i...