The aim of epilepsy surgery in patients with focal, pharmacoresistant epilepsies is to remove the complete epileptogenic zone to achieve long-term seizure freedom. In addition to a spectrum of ...diagnostic methods, magnetoencephalography focus localization is used for planning of epilepsy surgery. We present results from a retrospective observational cohort study of 1000 patients, evaluated using magnetoencephalography at the University Hospital Erlangen over the time span of 28 years. One thousand consecutive cases were included in the study, evaluated at the University Hospital Erlangen between 1990 and 2018. All patients underwent magnetoencephalography as part of clinical workup for epilepsy surgery. Of these, 405 underwent epilepsy surgery after magnetoencephalography, with postsurgical follow-ups of up to 20 years. Sensitivity for interictal epileptic activity was evaluated, in addition to concordance of localization with the consensus of presurgical workup on a lobar level. We evaluate magnetoencephalography characteristics of patients who underwent epilepsy surgery versus patients who did not proceed to surgery. In operated patients, resection of magnetoencephalography localizations were related to postsurgical seizure outcomes, including long-term results after several years. In comparison, association of lesionectomy with seizure outcomes was analysed. Measures of diagnostic accuracy were calculated for magnetoencephalography resection and lesionectomy. Sensitivity for interictal epileptic activity was 72% with significant differences between temporal and extra-temporal lobe epilepsy. Magnetoencephalography was concordant with the presurgical consensus in 51% and showed additional or more focal involvement in an additional 32%. Patients who proceeded to surgery showed a significantly higher percentage of monofocal magnetoencephalography results. Complete magnetoencephalography resection was associated with significantly higher chances to achieve seizure freedom in the short and long-term. Diagnostic accuracy was significant in temporal and extra-temporal lobe cases, but was significantly higher in extra-temporal lobe epilepsy (diagnostic odds ratios of 4.4 and 41.6). Odds ratios were also higher in non-lesional versus lesional cases (42.0 versus 6.2). The results show that magnetoencephalography provides non-redundant information, which significantly contributes to patient selection, focus localization and ultimately long-term seizure freedom after epilepsy surgery. Specifically in extra-temporal lobe epilepsy and non-lesional cases, magnetoencephalography provides excellent accuracy.
Macha and Schwab discuss the study by Rodrigues et al on the time course of hemispheric cerebral volume after decompressive hemicraniectomy (DCH) using hemispheric volumetric measurements of all ...computed tomography scans (CT scans) performed during inpatient stay before and after DCH. In the study cohort, decompressive hemicraniectomy was performed 41.88 hours after stroke onset. The peak of the hemisphere volume was reached at day 7 after the ischemic event. However, the steepest increase in hemisphere volume was demonstrated in the early phase after stroke onset and 28% of patients showed ipsilateral mydriasis before DHC. This highlights the importance of timely selection of malignant cerebral infarction patients requiring and potentially benefiting from DHC.
Life-threatening, space-occupying brain edema occurs in up to 10% of patients with supratentorial infarcts and is traditionally associated with a high mortality rate of up to 80%. Management of these ...patients is currently being changed to an earlier and more aggressive treatment regimen. Early surgical decompression has recently been proven effective to reduce mortality and increase the number of patients with a favorable outcome in randomized controlled trials and is now the "antiedema" therapy of first choice for patients with large middle cerebral artery infarction aged 60 years or younger. Several medical treatment strategies have been proposed to control brain edema and reduce intracranial pressure, including different osmotherapeutics, hyperventilation, tromethamine, hypothermia, and barbiturate coma. None of these treatments is supported by level 1 evidence of efficacy in clinical trials, and some of them may even be detrimental. Preliminary results on hypothermia for space-occupying hemispheric infarction are encouraging, but far from definitive.
Objective
Oral anticoagulation treatment (OAT) resumption is a therapeutic dilemma in intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) care, particularly for lobar hemorrhages related to amyloid angiopathy. We sought ...to determine whether OAT resumption after ICH is associated with long‐term outcome, accounting for ICH location (ie, lobar vs nonlobar).
Methods
We meta‐analyzed individual patient data from: (1) the multicenter RETRACE study (n = 542), (2) a U.S.‐based single‐center ICH study (n = 261), and (3) the Ethnic/Racial Variations of Intracerebral Hemorrhage study (n = 209). We determined whether, within 1 year from ICH, OAT resumption was associated with: (1) mortality, (2) favorable functional outcome (modified Rankin Scale = 0–3), and (3) stroke incidence. We separately analyzed nonlobar and lobar ICH cases using propensity score matching and Cox regression models.
Results
We included 1,012 OAT‐related ICH survivors (633 nonlobar and 379 lobar). Among nonlobar ICH survivors, 178/633 (28%) resumed OAT, whereas 86/379 (23%) lobar ICH survivors did. In multivariate analyses, OAT resumption after nonlobar ICH was associated with decreased mortality (hazard ratio HR = 0.25, 95% confidence interval CI = 0.14–0.44, p < 0.0001) and improved functional outcome (HR = 4.22, 95% CI = 2.57–6.94, p < 0.0001). OAT resumption after lobar ICH was also associated with decreased mortality (HR = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.17–0.45, p < 0.0001) and favorable functional outcome (HR = 4.08, 95% CI = 2.48–6.72, p < 0.0001). Furthermore, OAT resumption was associated with decreased all‐cause stroke incidence in both lobar and nonlobar ICH (both p < 0.01).
Interpretation
These results suggest novel evidence of an association between OAT resumption and outcome following ICH, regardless of hematoma location. These findings support conducting randomized trials to explore risks and benefits of OAT resumption after ICH. Ann Neurol 2017;82:755–765
Summary Space-occupying, malignant middle cerebral artery (MCA) infarctions are still one of the most devastating forms of ischaemic stroke, with a mortality of up to 80% in untreated patients. An ...early diagnosis is essential and depends on CT and MRI to aid the prediction of a malignant course. Several pharmacological strategies have been proposed but the efficacy of these approaches has not been supported by adequate evidence from clinical trials and, until recently, treatment of malignant MCA infarctions has been a major unmet need. Over the past 3 years, results from randomised controlled trials and their pooled analyses have provided evidence that an early hemicraniectomy leads to a substantial decrease in mortality at 6 and 12 months and is likely to improve functional outcome. Hemicraniectomy is now in routine use for the clinical management of malignant MCA infarction in patients younger than 60 years of age. However, there are still important questions about the individual indication for decompressive surgery, particularly with regard to the ideal timing of hemicraniectomy, a potential cut-off age for the procedure, the hemisphere affected, and ethical considerations about functional outcome in surviving patients.
Dementia is one of the most common neurological syndromes in the world. Usually, diagnoses are made based on paper-and-pencil tests and scored depending on personal judgments of experts. This ...technique can introduce errors and has high inter-rater variability. To overcome these issues, we present an automatic assessment of the widely used paper-based clock-drawing test by means of deep neural networks. Our study includes a comparison of three modern architectures: VGG16, ResNet-152, and DenseNet-121. The dataset consisted of 1315 individuals. To deal with the limited amount of data, which also included several dementia types, we used optimization strategies for training the neural network. The outcome of our work is a standardized and digital estimation of the dementia screening result and severity level for an individual. We achieved accuracies of 96.65% for screening and up to 98.54% for scoring, overcoming the reported state-of-the-art as well as human accuracies. Due to the digital format, the paper-based test can be simply scanned by using a mobile device and then be evaluated also in areas where there is a staff shortage or where no clinical experts are available.
Purpose
Various software applications offer support in the diagnosis of acute ischemic stroke (AIS), yet it remains unclear whether the performance of these tools is comparable to each other. Our ...study aimed to evaluate three fully automated software applications for Alberta Stroke Program Early CT (ASPECT) scoring (Syngo.via Frontier ASPECT Score Prototype V2, Brainomix e-ASPECTS® and RAPID ASPECTS) in AIS patients.
Methods
Retrospectively, 131 patients with large vessel occlusion (LVO) of the middle cerebral artery or the internal carotid artery, who underwent endovascular therapy (EVT), were included. Pre-interventional non-enhanced CT (NECT) datasets were assessed in random order using the automated ASPECT software and by three experienced neuroradiologists in consensus. Interclass correlation coefficient (ICC), Bland-Altman, and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) were applied for statistical analysis.
Results
Median ASPECTS of the expert consensus reading was 8 (7–10). Highest correlation was between the expert read and Brainomix (
r
= 0.871 (0.818, 0.909),
p
< 0.001). Correlation between expert read and Frontier V2 (
r
= 0.801 (0.719, 0.859),
p
< 0.001) and between expert read and RAPID (
r
= 0.777 (0.568, 0.871),
p
< 0.001) was high, respectively. There was a high correlation among the software tools (Frontier V2 and Brainomix:
r
= 0.830 (0.760, 0.880),
p
< 0.001; Frontier V2 and RAPID:
r
= 0.847 (0.693, 0.913),
p
< 0.001; Brainomix and RAPID:
r
= 0.835 (0.512, 0.923),
p
< 0.001). An ROC curve analysis revealed comparable accuracy between the applications and expert consensus reading (Brainomix: AUC = 0.759 (0.670–0.848),
p
< 0.001; Frontier V2: AUC = 0.752 (0.660–0.843),
p
< 0.001; RAPID: AUC = 0.734 (0.634–0.831),
p
< 0.001).
Conclusion
Overall, there is a convincing yet developable grade of agreement between current ASPECT software evaluation tools and expert evaluation with regard to ASPECT assessment in AIS.
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Data on long-term survival and recurrence after stroke are lacking. We investigated time trends in ischemic stroke case-fatality and recurrence rates over 20-years stratified ...by etiological subtype according to the Trial of ORG 10172 in Acute Stroke Treatment classification within a population-based stroke register in Germany.
METHODS:Data was collected within the Erlangen Stroke Project, a prospective, population-based stroke register covering a source population of 105 164 inhabitants (2010). Case fatality and recurrence rates for 3 months, 1 year, and 5 years were estimated with Kaplan-Meier estimates. Sex-specific time trends for case-fatality and recurrence rates were estimated with Cox regression. We adjusted for age, sex, and year of event and stratified for etiological subtypes. A sensitivity analysis with competing risk analysis for time trends in recurrence were performed.
RESULTS:Between 1996 and 2015, 3346 patients with first ischemic stroke were included; age-standardized incidence per 100 000 was 75.8 in women and 131.6 in men (2015). Overall, 5-year survival probabilities were 50.4% (95% CI, 47.9–53.1) in women and 59.2% (95% CI, 56.4–62.0) in men; 5-year survival was highest in patients with first stroke due to small-artery occlusion (women, 71.8% 95% CI, 67.1–76.9; men, 75.9% 95% CI, 71.3–80.9) and lowest in cardioembolic stroke (women, 35.7% 95% CI, 31.0–41.1; men, 47.8% 95% CI, 42.2–54.3). Five-year recurrence rates were 20.1% (95% CI, 17.5–22.6) in women and 20.1% (95% CI, 17.5–22.7) in men; 5-year recurrence rate was lowest in women in stroke due to small artery occlusion 16.0% (95% CI, 11.7–20.1) and in men in large-artery atherosclerosis 16.6% (95% CI, 8.7–23.9); highest risk of recurrence was observed in undefined strokes (women, 22.3% 95% CI, 17.8–26.6; men, 21.4% 95% CI, 16.7–25.9). Cox regression revealed improvements in case-fatality rates over time with differences in stroke causes. No time trends in recurrence rates were observed.
CONCLUSIONS:Long-term survival and recurrence varied substantially by first stroke cause. Survival probabilities improved over the past 2 decades; no major trends in stroke recurrence rates were observed.
The expression of selected microRNAs (miRNAs) known to be involved in the regulation of immune responses was analyzed in 74 patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) and 32 healthy ...controls. Four miRNAs (miR-326, miR-155, miR-146a, miR-142-3p) were aberrantly expressed in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from RRMS patients compared to controls. Although expression of these selected miRNAs did not differ between treatment-naïve (n = 36) and interferon-beta treated RRMS patients (n = 18), expression of miR-146a and miR-142-3p was significantly lower in glatiramer acetate (GA) treated RRMS patients (n = 20) suggesting that GA, at least in part, restores the expression of deregulated miRNAs in MS.
Numerous preclinical findings and a clinical pilot study suggest that recombinant human erythropoietin (EPO) provides neuroprotection that may be beneficial for the treatment of patients with ...ischemic stroke. Although EPO has been considered to be a safe and well-tolerated drug over 2 decades, recent studies have identified increased thromboembolic complications and/or mortality risks on EPO administration to patients with cancer or chronic kidney disease. Accordingly, the double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized German Multicenter EPO Stroke Trial (Phase II/III; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00604630) was designed to evaluate efficacy and safety of EPO in stroke.
This clinical trial enrolled 522 patients with acute ischemic stroke in the middle cerebral artery territory (intent-to-treat population) with 460 patients treated as planned (per-protocol population). Within 6 hours of symptom onset, at 24 and 48 hours, EPO was infused intravenously (40,000 IU each). Systemic thrombolysis with recombinant tissue plasminogen activator was allowed and stratified for.
Unexpectedly, a very high number of patients received recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (63.4%). On analysis of total intent-to-treat and per-protocol populations, neither primary outcome Barthel Index on Day 90 (P=0.45) nor any of the other outcome parameters showed favorable effects of EPO. There was an overall death rate of 16.4% (n=42 of 256) in the EPO and 9.0% (n=24 of 266) in the placebo group (OR, 1.98; 95% CI, 1.16 to 3.38; P=0.01) without any particular mechanism of death unexpected after stroke.
Based on analysis of total intent-to-treat and per-protocol populations only, this is a negative trial that also raises safety concerns, particularly in patients receiving systemic thrombolysis.
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