1. Ischemic stroke in patients that recover from COVID-19: Comparisons to historical stroke prior to COVID-19 or stroke in patients with active COVID-19 infection.
- Author
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Akhtar N, Abid F, Singh R, Kamran S, Imam Y, Al-Jerdi S, Salamah S, Al Attar R, Yasir M, Shabir H, Morgan D, Joseph S, AlMaslamani M, and Shuaib A
- Subjects
- Humans, Pandemics, Treatment Outcome, Brain Ischemia epidemiology, COVID-19 complications, COVID-19 epidemiology, Ischemic Stroke complications, Ischemic Stroke epidemiology, Stroke complications, Stroke diagnosis, Stroke epidemiology
- Abstract
Background and Purpose: Understanding the relationship of COVID-19 to stroke is important. We compare characteristics of pre-pandemic historical stroke (Pre-C), cases in acute COVID infection (Active-C) and in patients who have recovered from COVID-19 infection (Post-C)., Methods: We interrogated the Qatar stroke database for all stroke admissions between Jan 2019 and Feb 2020 (Pre-C) to Active-C (Feb2020-Feb2021) and Post-C to determine how COVID-19 affected ischemic stroke sub-types, clinical course, and outcomes prior to, during and post-pandemic peak. We used the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) to measure outcome at 90-days (mRS 0-2 good recovery and mRS 3-6 as poor recovery). For the current analysis, we compared the clinical features and prognosis in patients with confirmed acute ischemic stroke., Results: There were 1413 cases admitted (pre-pandemic: 1324, stroke in COVID-19: 46 and recovered COVID-19 stroke: 43). Patients with Active-C were significantly younger, had more severe symptoms, fever on presentation, more ICU admissions and poor stroke recovery at discharge when compared to Pre-C and Post-C. Large vessel disease and cardioembolic disease was significantly more frequent in Active-C compared to PRE-C or post-C., Conclusions: Stroke in Post-C has characteristics similar to Pre-C with no evidence of lasting effects of the virus on the short-term. However, Active-C is a more serious disease and tends to be more severe and have a poor prognosis., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
- Published
- 2022
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