Background and purpose The bedside head impulse test (bHIT) is used to differentiate vestibular neuritis (VN) from posterior circulation stroke (PCS) in patients presenting with acute vestibular syndrome (AVS). If assessed by neuro‐otological experts, diagnostic accuracy is high. We report on its diagnostic accuracy when applied by nonexperts during routine clinical practice in the emergency department (ED), its impact on patient management, and the potential diagnostic yield of the video‐oculography–supported head impulse test (vHIT). Methods Medical chart review of 38 AVS patients presenting to our university medical center's ED, assessed by neurology residents. We collected bHIT results (abnormal/peripheral or normal/central) and whether patients were admitted to the stroke unit or general neurological ward. Final diagnosis (VN, n = 24; PCS, n = 14) was determined by clinical course, magnetic resonance imaging, and vHIT. Results The bHIT's accuracy was only 58%. Its sensitivity for VN was high (88%), but due to many false‐abnormal bHITs in PCS (36%), the specificity was low (64%). The vHIT yielded excellent specificity (100%) and moderate sensitivity (67%). The decision on the patient's further care was almost arbitrary and independent from the bHIT: 58% of VN and 57% of PCS patients were admitted to the stroke unit. Conclusions The bHIT, applied by nonexperts during routine practice in the ED, has low accuracy, is too often mistaken as abnormal/peripheral, and is not consistently used for patients' in‐hospital triage. As false‐abnormal bHITs can lead to misdiagnosis/mistreatment of stroke patients, we recommend that bHIT applied by nonexperts should be reassessed by a neuro‐otological expert or preferably quantitative vHIT in the ED.

BackgroundGrowth-differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15) is an emerging humoral marker for risk stratification in cardiovascular disease. Cardiac-surgery-associated acute kidney injury (CSA-AKI), an important complication in patients undergoing cardiac surgery, is associated with poor prognosis. The present secondary analysis of an observational cohort study aimed to determine the role of GDF-15 in predicting CSA-AKI compared with the Cleveland-Clinic Acute Renal Failure (CC-ARF) score and a logistic regression model including variables associated with renal dysfunction.MethodsPreoperative plasma GDF-15 was determined in 1176 consecutive patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery. Patients with chronic kidney disease stage 5 were excluded. AKI was defined according to Kidney-Disease-Improving-Global-Outcomes (KDIGO) - creatinine criteria. The following variables were screened for association with development of postoperative AKI: age, gender, additive Euroscore, serum creatinine, duration of cardiopulmonary bypass, duration of surgery, type of surgery, total circulatory arrest, preoperative hemoglobin, preoperative oxygen-supplemented cerebral oxygen saturation, diabetes mellitus, hemofiltration during ECC, plasma GDF-15, high sensitivity troponin T (hsTNT), and N-terminal prohormone of B-type natriuretic peptide (NTproBNP).ResultsThere were 258 patients (21.9 %) with AKI (AKI stage 1 (AKI-1), n = 175 (14.9 %); AKI-2, n = 6 (0.5 %); AKI-3, n = 77 (6.5 %)). The incidence of AKI-1 and AKI-3 increased significantly from the lowest to the highest tertiles of GDF-15. In logistic regression, preoperative GDF-15, additive Euroscore, age, plasma creatinine, diabetes mellitus, and duration of cardiopulmonary bypass were independently associated with AKI. Inclusion of GDF-15 in a logistic regression model comprising these variables significantly increased the area under the curve (AUC 0.738 without and 0.750 with GDF-15 included) and the net reclassification ability to predict AKI. Comparably, in receiver operating characteristic analysis the predictive capacity of the CC-ARF score (AUC 0.628) was improved by adding GDF-15 (AUC 0.684) but this score also had lower predictability than the logistic regression model. In random forest analyses the predictive capacity of GDF-15 was especially pronounced in patients with normal plasma creatinine.ConclusionThis suggests that preoperative plasma GDF-15 independently predicts postoperative AKI in patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery and is particularly helpful for risk stratification in patients with normal creatinine.Trial registration NCT01166360 on July 20, 2010.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13054-016-1482-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Objective: The head impulse test (HIT) assesses the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) and is used to differentiate vestibular neuritis (abnormal VOR) from stroke (normal VOR) in patients presenting with an acute vestibular syndrome (AVS). The video-oculography-based HIT (vHIT) quantifies VOR function and provides information imperceptible for the clinician during clinical bedside HIT. However, the vHIT—like an electrocardiogram—requires experienced interpretation, which is especially difficult in the emergency setting. This calls for a simple, reliable and rater-independent way of analysis.Methods: We retrospectively collected 171 vHITs performed in patients presenting with AVS to our emergency department. Three neuro-otological experts comprehensively assessed the vHITs including interpretability (artifacts), VOR gain (eye/head velocity ratio), velocity profile (abrupt decline) and corrective saccades (overt/covert). Their consensus rating (abnormal/peripheral vs. normal/central) was compared to a simple algorithm that automatically classified the vHITs based on a single VOR gain cutoff (0.7).Results: Inter-rater agreement between experts was high (Fleiss' kappa = 0.74). Five (2.9 %) vHITs were “uninterpretable” according to experts' consensus, 80 (46.8 %) were rated “normal” and 86 (50.3 %) “abnormal”. The algorithm had substantial agreement with the experts' consensus (Cohen's kappa = 0.75). Importantly, it correctly classified all of the normal/central vHITs denoted by the experts (100% specificity) and at the same time it had sufficient sensitivity (75.6%) in detecting abnormal/peripheral vHITs.Conclusion: A simple, automated, gain-based evaluation of the vHIT reliably detects normal/central VOR and may be a feasible and effective tool to screen AVS patients for potentially underlying stroke in the emergency setting.