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Background and Purpose— As a reliable scoring system to detect the risk of symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage after thrombectomy for ischemic stroke is not yet available, we developed a nomogram for predicting symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage in patients with large vessel occlusion in the anterior circulation who received bridging of thrombectomy with intravenous thrombolysis (training set), and to validate the model by using a cohort of patients treated with direct thrombectomy (test set). Methods— We conducted a cohort study on prospectively collected data from 3714 patients enrolled in the IER (Italian Registry of Endovascular Stroke Treatment in Acute Stroke). Symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage was defined as any type of intracerebral hemorrhage with increase of ≥4 National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score points from baseline ≤24 hours or death. Based on multivariate logistic models, the nomogram was generated. We assessed the discriminative performance by using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Results— National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, onset-to-end procedure time, age, unsuccessful recanalization, and Careggi collateral score composed the IER-SICH nomogram. After removing Careggi collateral score from the first model, a second model including Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score was developed. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the IER-SICH nomogram was 0.778 in the training set (n=492) and 0.709 in the test set (n=399). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the second model was 0.733 in the training set (n=988) and 0.685 in the test set (n=779). Conclusions— The IER-SICH nomogram is the first model developed and validated for predicting symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage after thrombectomy. It may provide indications on early identification of patients for more or less postprocedural intensive management.

In questo studio è con un grande campione di pazienti con emorragia cerebrale (111 soggetti) in cui è stata verificata una aumentata prevalenza di sospetto disturbo respiratorio del sonno valutat tramite la scala Berlin Questionnaire rispetto ad altrettanti con ischemia cerebrale (111 soggetti) e altrettanti controlli (n111). La metodica di appaiamento per variabili quali età, sesso, BMI e CCI ha permesso di escludere una eventuale influenza da parte di queste variabili. Dallo studio di variabili di outcome funzionale è risultata significativa la correlazione tra positività per disturbo respiratorio del sonno e un peggior outcome funzionale sia in termini di disabilità (mRS ≥ 3) che di mortalità (mRS =6) nei pazienti con BQ positivo, sia ischemici che emorragici. A riprova di questo ruolo prognosticamente negativo della sospetta OSAS nei pazienti con emorragia cerebrale anche un aumento della durata globale del ricovero in giorni dei pazienti nel gruppo dei positivi. Nel tentativo di esplorare il legame tra disturbi respiratori del sonno ed emorragia cerebrale sono state valutate le neuroimmagini e le caratteristiche di ipertensione arteriosa. E’ stato così riscontrato un tasso complessivo di peggioramento delle lesioni al controllo a 10 giorni circa, aumentato significativamente nei pazienti BQ positivi, con associata inoltre una tendenza all’aumento dell’edema perilesionale. L’ipotesi più probabile rimane comunque che il meccanismo principale con cui il disturbo respiratorio del sonno influisce sull’insorgenza e il peggioramento dell’emorragia cerebrale sia legato all’ipertensione arteriosa. Tale legame, facilmente intuibile considerate le discrete conoscenze sui tre fenomeni, è stato qui dimostrato tramite il riscontro di un tasso notevolmente e significativamente aumentato di ipertensione arteriosa, di profilo pressorio notturno alterato con prevalenza di pazienti non dipper e di aumentata pressione arteriosa farmaco resistente nei pazienti emorragici BQ positivi., Background: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is currently undertaken to impair ischemic stroke risk especially by intracranial pressure, blood flow, glucose metabolism, atherogenesis, blood coagulation, cardiac arrhythmia and arterial hypertension. In OSA patients hypertension is often related to drug resistance and modification in nocturnal blood pressure profile. In stroke patients with OSA has been observed an impairment of functional outcome. About OSA and intra cranial haemorrhage (ICH) few data are available in literature and most of them are anecdotal. We can speculate that OSA can affect on ICH by arterial hypertension. Methods: in this study we sought to test whether suspected OSA is more prevalent in ICH group than in control. In order to limit potential confounding variables associated with acute ICH, we tested by Berlin Questionnaire (BQ) and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) referring to the previous 3 months before ICH. Secondarily, we tried to assess if OSA in ICH could affect on functional outcome (mRS) like disability or mortality, as described in ischemic stroke. For these purposes we recruited 111 ICH patients matched by sex, age, Body Mass Index (BMI) and Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) with 111 ischemic stroke patients and 111 controls. Results: In ICH patients we found BQ positivity in 30,6% vs 25,2% in ischemic stroke patients vs 13,5% in controls (p 0.01). Moreover BQ positive ICH patients had more disability, mortality, length of recovery, arterial hypertension, drug resistance hypertension and nocturnal blood pressure profile alteration, especially non dipper pattern, than BQ negative ICH. Conclusion: The results suggest that OSA can be considered a risk factor and a negative prognostic factor in ICH patients, as described before in ischemic stroke patients. Moreover we can considered this fenomena probably related to blood pressure alteration caused by sleep breathing disorder.

Purpose To compare the diagnostic accuracy (ACC) in the detection of acute posterior circulation strokes between qualitative evaluation of software-generated colour maps and automatic assessment of CT perfusion (CTP) parameters. Methods Were retrospectively collected 50 patients suspected of acute posterior circulation stroke who underwent to CTP (GE “Lightspeed”, 64 slices) within 24 h after symptom onset between January 2016 and December 2018. The Posterior circulation-Acute Stroke Prognosis Early CT Score (pc-ASPECTS) was used for quantifying the extent of ischaemic areas on non-contrast (NC)CT and colour-coded maps generated by CTP4 (GE) and RAPID (iSchemia View) software. Final pc-ASPECTS was calculated on follow-up NCCT and/or MRI (Philips Intera 3.0 T or Philips Achieva Ingenia 1.5 T). RAPID software also elaborated automatic quantitative mismatch maps. Results By qualitative evaluation of colour-coded maps, MTT-CTP4D and Tmax-RAPID showed the highest sensitivity (SE) (88.6% and 90.9%, respectively) and ACC (84% and 88%, respectively) compared with the other perfusion parameters (CBV, CBF). Baseline NCCT and CBF provided by RAPID quantitative perfusion mismatch maps had the lowest SE (29.6% and 6.8%, respectively) and ACC (38% and 18%, respectively). CBF and Tmax assessment provided by quantitative RAPID perfusion mismatch maps showed significant lower SE and ACC than qualitative evaluation. No significant differences were found between the pc-ASPECTSs assessed on colour-coded MTT and Tmax maps neither between the scores assessed on colour-coded CBV-CTP4D and CBF-RAPID maps. Conclusion Qualitative analysis of colour-coded maps resulted more sensitive and accurate in the detection of ischaemic changes than automatic quantitative analysis.