Deans' stroke musings: The Determinants of Dementia After Stroke (DEDEMAS) Study: protocol and pilot data

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The Determinants of Dementia After Stroke (DEDEMAS) Study: protocol and pilot data

You are going to have to demand your doctor get this and figure out exactly how to prevent you from going into dementia. Only 20% chance in this one, have your doctor compare it to the 33% chance one from Australia.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijs.12092/abstract;jsessionid=0E5963A7C116206580A8B7B1D091A4B5.d01t04

Rationale

About 20% of stroke patients develop dementia within a few months after their event, but the determinants and mechanisms of poststroke dementia are insufficiently understood.

Aims

To identify and characterize the determinants of cognitive impairment poststroke.

Design

Observational prospective study in patients with acute stroke and no prior dementia. Six hundred subjects will be characterized by detailed interview, standardized clinical examinations, biometric measures (intima-media thickness, waist-hip ratio, and ankle-brachial index), multimodal imaging (magnetic resonance imaging, fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET), amyloid-positron emission tomography (amyloid-PET), and retinal imaging), analysis of biomarkers derived from blood and cerebrospinal fluid, and detailed cognitive testing at repeat time points. Patients will be followed for five-years with a total of five personal visits and three telephone interviews.

Study Outcomes

Primary end-point is the occurrence of poststroke dementia. Secondary end-points include poststroke cognitive impairment–no dementia, stroke recurrence, and death. Predictive factors for poststroke dementia will be identified by multiple Cox proportional-hazards model.

Results

Baseline characteristics of the first 71 patients (study inclusion between May 2011 and August 2012) are as follows: median age, 70 years (interquartile range, 65–75); female gender, 25 (35%); median National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale at admission, 2 (1–4); and etiological stroke subtypes according to TOAST classification, 15% large artery disease, 18% small vessel disease, 35% cardioembolic, and 32% undetermined or multiple competing etiologies.

Discussion

This study will provide insights into the mechanisms of poststroke dementia and hold the potential to identify novel diagnostic markers and targets for preventive therapies. The study is registered at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01334749) and will be extended as a multicenter study starting 2013.