Variables affecting short-term prognosis in completed stroke

Abstract

After a review of the prognostic factors affecting the short-term outcome of completed stroke, the implications for the design of stroke treatment trials are discussed. These concern stratification variables, patient selection, sample size estimation, length of follow-up, and measures of outcome. Potential variables for stratification are type of stroke (i.e. infarct or hemorrhage), age of the patient, level of consciousness, and preceding hypertension and heart disease.

Predicting functional outcome and survival after acute ischemic stroke

“…In addition, the following neurological deficits have been described as independent predictors: level of consciousness, orientation, limb paresis, trunc ataxia, and dysphagia [4,8,11,17,25,31]. In our analyses, the total NIH-SS score at admission was a prognostic factor for functional dependence or death in model I and mortality in model II.…”