Deans' stroke musings: A Clinical Score for Predicting Atrial Fibrillation in Patients with Cryptogenic Stroke or Transient Ischemic Attack

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.

Monday, July 17, 2017

A Clinical Score for Predicting Atrial Fibrillation in Patients with Cryptogenic Stroke or Transient Ischemic Attack

What protocol is your doctor doing to detect if you have atrial fibrillation? And for how long? I don't recall my doctor doing anything, I never heard it mentioned. I never had a medical history taken from me. My dad had a carotid endarterectomy when his blockage got to 80%. My brother was a blue baby where the hole between the right and left atriums never closed up. So since they never found my right carotid blockage the stroke could have come from a PFO.
https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/476030

Kwong C.^a · Ling A.Y.^c · Crawford M.H.^e · Zhao S.X.^b · Shah N.H.^d
Author affiliations

Keywords: Atrial fibrillationCryptogenic strokeRhythm monitoringCardiovascular risk and prevention

Cardiology 2017;138:133-140

https://doi.org/10.1159/000476030

Abstract

Objectives: Detection of atrial fibrillation (AF) in post-cryptogenic stroke (CS) or transient ischemic attack (TIA) patients carries important therapeutic implications.
Methods: To risk stratify CS/TIA patients for later development of AF, we conducted a retrospective cohort study using data from 1995 to 2015 in the Stanford Translational Research Integrated Database Environment (STRIDE).
Results: Of the 9,589 adult patients (age ≥40 years) with CS/TIA included, 482 (5%) patients developed AF post CS/TIA. Of those patients, 28.4, 26.3, and 45.3% were diagnosed with AF 1-12 months, 1-3 years, and >3 years after the index CS/TIA, respectively. Age (≥75 years), obesity, congestive heart failure, hypertension, coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, and valve disease are significant risk factors, with the following respective odds ratios (95% CI): 1.73 (1.39-2.16), 1.53 (1.05-2.18), 3.34 (2.61-4.28), 2.01 (1.53-2.68), 1.72 (1.35-2.19), 1.37 (1.02-1.84), and 2.05 (1.55-2.69). A risk-scoring system, i.e., the HAVOC score, was constructed using these 7 clinical variables that successfully stratify patients into 3 risk groups, with good model discrimination (area under the curve = 0.77).
Conclusions: Findings from this study support the strategy of looking longer and harder for AF in post-CS/TIA patients. The HAVOC score identifies different levels of AF risk and may be used to select patients for extended rhythm monitoring.