Stroke Alert
Negar Asdaghi, MD, MSc, FRCPC, FAHA
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Top 10 Stroke Alert Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Stroke Alert episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Stroke Alert for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Stroke Alert episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Stroke Alert September 2024
Stroke Alert
09/19/24 • 61 min
On Episode 44 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the September 2024 issue of Stroke: “Stroke Risk After Emergency Department Treat-and-Release Visit for a Fall” and “Higher Risk of Mental Illness in Patients with Diagnosed and Untreated, Unruptured Intracranial Aneurysm: Findings from a Nationwide Cohort Study.” She also interviews Dr. Yutong Chen and Professor Hugh Markus about the article “Improved Dementia Prediction in Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Using Deep Learning–Derived Diffusion Scalar Maps From T1,” published in Stroke.
For the episode transcript, visit: https://www.ahajournals.org/do/10.1161/podcast.20240913.368707
Stroke Alert May 2025
Stroke Alert
05/15/25 • 74 min
On Episode 52 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the May 2025 issue of Stroke: “Assessing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Childhood Arterial Ischemic Stroke: An Unanticipated Natural Experiment” and “Low Hemoglobin Causes Hematoma Expansion and Poor Intracerebral Hemorrhage Outcomes.” She also interviews Dr. David Fiorella about the MIND trial, presented in February at the International Stroke Conference.
For the episode transcript, visit: https://www.ahajournals.org/do/10.1161/podcast.20250508.399500
Stroke Alert September 2022
Stroke Alert
09/15/22 • 42 min
On Episode 20 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the September 2022 issue of Stroke: “Transdural Revascularization by Multiple Burrhole After Erythropoietin in Stroke Patients With Cerebral Hypoperfusion” and “Silent Infarcts, White Matter Integrity, and Oxygen Metabolic Stress in Young Adults With and Without Sickle Cell Trait.” She also interviews Dr. Timo Uphaus about his article “Revacept, an Inhibitor of Platelet Adhesion in Symptomatic Carotid Stenosis.”
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Let's start with some questions.
1) Can performing multiple burrholes improve misery perfusion in patients with moyamoya disease? And if yes, how do the results compare to that of a direct EC-IC bypass surgery?
2) The glycoprotein VI antagonist Revacept provides lesion-directed thromboinhibition at the site of atherosclerotic plaque rupture without causing systemic platelet inhibition. In other words, it works where it should work without causing the systemic side effects of antiplatelet therapies. Is Revacept the future of carotid-related stroke treatment?
3) And finally, how should we counsel the family members of a patient with sickle cell anemia who are found to have sickle trait carrier state? Is sickle cell trait a risk factor for development of ischemic stroke?
We're back here with the Stroke Alert Podcast to answer these questions and cover the latest in Stroke because, without a doubt, this is the best in Stroke. Stay with us.
Welcome back to another issue of the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast.
For the September 2022 issue of Stroke, we have a number of articles that I'd like to highlight. As part of our International Stroke Early Career and Training section, or the InterSECT series, we have an important article by Drs. Kathryn Hayward and Aaron Davis to discuss the importance of science visualization as a simple, but not a simplistic way to improve scientific communications with the public.
The authors stress that the ability to communicate complex scientific information in an easily understandable format to those unfamiliar with the subject is not an obligation on the part of the scientists, rather, an opportunity for the scientific community to elevate knowledge translation for all.
In a separate article in this issue of the journal, we learned that the presence of early venous filling, or EVF, post-endovascular thrombectomy, defined as presence of contrast opacification of any cerebral vein before the late arterial phase, is an important angiographic marker that has been associated with an increased risk of post-reperfusion hemorrhage and worse clinical outcomes.
In an original contribution, Dr. Wagih Ben Hassen from the Department of Neuroradiology at Université de Paris and colleagues looked at the predictive ability of TAGE score to determine the odds of development of symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage after thrombectomy. TAGE score, "T "for time from onset to successful recanalization of over 270 minutes, "A" for ASPECTS score either equal or less than five or ASPECTS of six to seven, "G" for blood glucose level of higher than seven millimole per liter, and "E" for EVF, or presence of early venous filling.
The authors found that presence of each of these variables within the TAGE score were independently associated with increased odds of post-thrombectomy symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage, and together, a higher TAGE score had a great prognostic value in predicting development of reperfusion hemorrhage.
I encourage you to review these articles in detail in addition to listening to our podcast today. Later in the podcast, I have the great pleasure of interviewing Dr. Timo Uphaus from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, on the results of a phase II clinical trial of symptomatic carotid stenosis patients treated with a novel glycoprotein VI inhibitor, Revacept. But first, with these two articles.
Bypass surgery is often performed for treatment of cerebral hypoperfusion, typically in the setting of chronic cerebral arteriopathies, such as moyamoya disease, moyamoya syndrome, or non-moyamoya steno-occlusive disorders causing perfusion-dependent ischemia.
In the adult popul...
Stroke Alert February 2021
Stroke Alert
03/02/21 • 19 min
On Episode 1 of the Stroke Alert podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two featured articles from the February 2021 issue of Stroke. This episode also features a conversation with Drs. Fabian Flottmann and Matthew Maros from the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, University Medical Center, in Hamburg, Germany, to discuss their article “Good Clinical Outcome Decreases With Number of Retrieval Attempts in Stroke Thrombectomy: Beyond the First-Pass Effect.”
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Are women more likely to suffer from stroke than men?
Are oral anticoagulants safe in atrial fibrillation patients with a prior history of GI bleeding?
Does pregnancy increase the risk of intracerebral hemorrhage in patients with cavernous malformation?
Does the number of retrieval attempts during thrombectomy affect the outcomes of stroke patients in whom successful reperfusion is achieved?
In today's podcast, we address some of these topics and much more. You're listening to the Stroke Alert Podcast. Stay with us.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: From the Editorial Board of Stroke, welcome to the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, and the host of the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. We're starting our podcasts with the February 2021 issue of the journal, which also features a special section on Go Red for Women stroke, a comprehensive American Heart Association platform to improve the vascular health of women globally. I hope you enjoy it.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Cavernous malformations or cavernomas are angiographically called vascular abnormalities, which can pose an increased risk for intracerebral hemorrhage. Cavernomas can have diverse neurological presentations ranging from mild neurological symptoms to seizures, but in some cases may remain entirely asymptomatic and are diagnosed incidentally as part of routine neuroimaging completed for other reasons. Earlier studies had reported higher rates of intracerebral hemorrhage from cavernomas during pregnancy, and have postulated a hormone-related increased expression of vascular endothelial growth factor or basic fibroblasts growth factors to explain this increased rate. Subsequent studies, however, have failed to demonstrate either progesterone or estrogen receptors in cavernomas. So the question is, should presence of cavernous malformation, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic, influence the reproductive choices of women of childbearing age? In the “Influence of Pregnancy on Hemorrhage Risk in Women With Cerebral and Spinal Cavernous Malformations,” Dr. Nycole Joseph and colleagues from the Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery from Mayo Clinic Rochester in Minnesota evaluated 365 pregnancies and 160 women with brain or spinal cord cavernomas. They found that during the cumulative 402 years of study follow-up, the risk of hemorrhage amongst non-pregnant patients in the study was 10.4% per year. They found only four patients with clinical hemorrhage during pregnancy, all of which resulted in the cavernomas being first diagnosed. None of the hemorrhages occurred during delivery, and all of the four patients had functionally independent outcomes by three months. Importantly, they found that no patient who became pregnant after the diagnosis of cavernous malformation had a hemorrhage while pregnant. They had a total of 33 pregnancies in the study, including one patient who had previously bled during a prior pregnancy and also patients with brainstem lesions and those who presented with hemorrhage at diagnosis. Both of these are factors for hemorrhage in cavernomas.
So, in summary, in this prospective study, pregnancy did not increase the risk of hemorrhage in women with a known brain or spinal cord cavernous malformation. And the vaginal delivery was safe in this population. The authors concluded that the presence of cavernous malformation should not influence the reproductive choices in women or their type of delivery.
Now, speaking of hemorrhage risk, let's move on to our next paper on anticoagulation therapy in patients with atrial fibrillation. The decision to start anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation can often be challenging in those who have suffered from a prior gastrointestinal bleeding. Prior studies have shown that the non–vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants, or NOACs, can carry a comparable and, in some cases, even a higher risk of GI bleed than warfarin. It should be noted that patients with a prior GI bleed were generally excluded from the pivotal randomized control trials that approved NOACs.
And importantly, the risk of bleeding may also be higher in certain race/ethnic groups, such as the Asian populatio...
Stroke Alert September 2021
Stroke Alert
09/16/21 • 31 min
On Episode 8 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the September 2021 issue of Stroke: “Risk of Fractures in Stroke Patients Treated With a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor” and “Carotid Plaques From Symptomatic Patients Are Characterized by Local Increase in Xanthine Oxidase Expression.” She also interviews Drs. Jukka Putaala and Markku Kaste about their article “Should Tenecteplase be Given in Clinical Practice for Acute Ischemic Stroke Thrombolysis?”.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi:
1) Are we ready to say goodbye to our old friend alteplase and replace it with a new one, tenecteplase, for acute stroke thrombolysis?
2) Does treatment of depression with SSRIs increase the risk of fractures in stroke patients?
3) When it comes to carotid intervention, should we continue offering treatment based on the degree of luminal stenosis, or are there better biomarkers in the horizon?
These are some of the questions that we'll tackle in today's podcast. We're covering the best in Stroke. Stay with us.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Welcome back to Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. For the September 2021 podcast, we have an exciting program where we discuss some of the controversies in stroke therapies. The September issue also contains a Focused Update with a set of articles and comprehensive reviews on the topic of genetics and stroke, organized by Professor Martin Dichgans, which I encourage you to review in addition to our podcast today. Later in today's podcast, I have the pleasure of interviewing Drs. Putaala and Kaste, from Helsinki Institute, to help us with a burning question of whether there's enough evidence now to use tenecteplase instead of alteplase for ischemic stroke thrombolysis. But first with these two articles.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Over a third of stroke survivors either have depressive symptoms or a formal diagnosis of depression. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, are the mainstay of depression treatment and the most common antidepressants prescribed in the U.S. In addition, in 2011, we had the results of the FLAME trial suggesting that early poststroke treatment with fluoxetine, a commonly prescribed SSRI, improves motor recovery and functional independence in stroke patients with motor deficit. Though these results were not replicated in the subsequent larger FOCUS trial, the use of SSRIs poststroke dramatically increased over the past decade. So what are the side effects of using SSRIs poststroke? It's a known fact that adult stroke survivors are more likely to experience bone fracture, and that there's some evidence that SSRIs may increase this risk.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: So, in the current issue of the journal, Dr. Graeme Hankey and Joshua Jones, from Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Western Australia, in Perth, and colleagues aimed to answer this question with a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials that included an SSRI treatment for an adult patient with a previous hemorrhagic or ischemic stroke and included incident fractures, either as a primary or secondary study outcome, amongst other criteria. So they found four randomized controlled trials that fulfilled their research criteria. Three of them looked at the effects of fluoxetine, used at a dose of 20 mg per day for six months duration, on functional recovery and outcomes after stroke. And one trial, which has studied neuroregeneration in vascular protection by citalopram, either at a 10 mg or 20 mg daily dose also for six months duration, in patients with acute ischemic stroke. So three studies included with fluoxetine and one study included citalopram.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: So, what they found was that although the risk of falls, seizures and recurrent stroke were not statistically increased with SSRI treatment, it was actually a significant increased risk of fractures with a risk ratio of 2.36 in patients treated with SSRI as compared to the placebo. Now, how the SSRIs will increase the risk of fractures is still unknown. There are multiple postulated mechanisms that are discussed in the paper, such as SSRIs potentially increasing spastic motor activity, causing orthostatic hypotension, dizziness, delayed reaction time or temporary imbalance or sleep disorders. But the most important mechanism to keep in mind is the possibility of SSRIs lowering bone...
Stroke Alert May 2021
Stroke Alert
05/20/21 • 21 min
On Episode 4 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two featured articles from the May 2021 issue of Stroke: “Association of Serum IL-6 With Functional Outcome After Intracerebral Hemorrhage” and “SARS-CoV-2 and Stroke Characteristics: A Report from the Multinational COVID-19 Stroke Study Group.” This episode also features a conversation with Dr. Alvaro Garcia-Tornel Garcia-Camba to discuss his article “Ischemic Core Overestimation on Computed Tomography Perfusion.”
Dr. Negar Asdaghi:
1) Can a pro inflammatory marker predict the hematoma size and clinical outcomes in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage?
2) What are the characteristics of stroke patients infected with coronavirus?
3) Is ischemic core reliably represented by the current established cerebral blood flow thresholds on CT perfusion imaging? Or are we underestimating the importance of perfusion overestimating the ischemic core?
We will discuss these topics in today's podcast. You're listening to Stroke Alert Podcast. Stay with us.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: From the Editorial Board of Stroke, welcome to the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. For the May 2021 issue of Stroke, we have an exciting program today, as we cover topics from the predictive role of inflammatory markers in intracerebral hemorrhage to characteristics of stroke patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus. Later in the podcast, I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Alvaro Garcia-Tornel Garcia-Camba from Autonomous University of Barcelona on the topic of ischemic core overestimation by CT perfusion imaging. I hope you enjoy our podcast.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Intracerebral hemorrhage is an aggressive form of stroke with high morbidity and mortality rates. Increased systemic inflammation may be correlated with more severe neurological presentation, larger hematoma volume, and worse clinical outcome in these patients. Elevated levels of interleukin 6, or IL-6, have been found in the experimental models of ICH and may represent a therapeutic target to reduce the inflammatory response in ICH if similar findings were replicated in clinical studies of patients with ICH.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: In the May issue of the journal, in the study titled “Association of Serum IL-6 With Functional Outcome After Intracerebral Hemorrhage,” Dr. Kevin Sheth from Department of Neurosurgery at Yale University and colleagues performed a pre-specified exploratory analysis of the patients enrolled in the FAST trial, testing the association of admission levels of serum IL-6 with baseline neuroimaging and functional outcome at 90 days.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: But just a reminder for our listeners that FAST trial was a multicenter randomized trial of the recombinant factor VIIa administered in two doses versus placebo in patients with spontaneous nontraumatic intracerebral hemorrhage presenting within three hours of symptom onset.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: So, in the current analysis, amongst 841 patients enrolled in the trial, 66% were included who had both baseline IL-6 measurements and the follow-up modified Rankin Scale on day 90. Patients were stratified into four quartiles based on their admission IL-6 serum levels from low/normal in quartile one to very high levels in quartile four. And their ...
Stroke Alert June 2021
Stroke Alert
06/17/21 • 24 min
Stroke Alert June 2021
On Episode 5 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the June 2021 issue of Stroke: "Preexisting Mild Cognitive Impairment, Dementia, and Receipt of Treatments for Acute Ischemic Stroke” and “Body Mass Index in 1.9 Million Adolescents and Stroke in Young Adulthood.” She also interviews Dr. Shyam Prabhakaran, from the University of Chicago, about his article "Predictors of Early Infarct Recurrence in Patients With Symptomatic Intracranial Atherosclerotic Disease."
Dr. Negar Asdaghi:
1) Do people with mild cognitive impairment receive the same quality of stroke care as their cognitively normal counterparts?
2) Is there a causative relationship between the alarming rise in adolescent obesity and the rise in the incidence of stroke under the age of 50?
3) What are the independent predictors of radiographic recurrence in patients with symptomatic intracranial atherosclerotic disease?
These are the topics that we will cover in today's podcast. You're listening to the Stroke Alert Podcast. Stay with us.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: From the Editorial Board of Stroke, welcome to the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. For the June 2021 issue of Stroke, we have a range of publications that cover a variety of topics from activation of neuroinflammatory pathways and intracerebral hemorrhage to predictors of outcome in patients with mild and rapidly improving ischemic stroke, which I encourage you to review, in addition to our podcast. Later in today's podcast, I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Shyam Prabhakaran from University of Chicago on his work with various radiographic biomarkers as predictors of outcome in patients with symptomatic intercranial atherosclerotic disease. But first, with these two papers.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: In the United States, one in five adults over the age of 65 have mild cognitive impairment, and one in seven have a formal diagnosis of dementia. With our aging population, these numbers are estimated to triple by year 2050. Prior studies suggest that patients with dementia are less likely to receive evidence-based stroke care as compared to those with normal cognition. Less is known about the quality of stroke care amongst patients with mild cognitive impairment. In their paper titled "Preexisting Mild Cognitive Impairment, Dementia, and Receipt of Treatments for Acute Ischemic Stroke," Dr. Deborah Levine from Departments of Neurology and Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan and colleagues studied the quality of care in acute ischemic stroke patients with mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, and preexisting dementia as compared to patients with normal cognition.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: This was a cross-sectional analysis of prospectively obtained data on adults with acute ischemic stroke included in the Brain Attack Surveillance in the Corpus Christi project from 2008 to 2013. Primary outcome of the study is a composite quality measure of defect-free care calculated by dividing the number of treatments that a patient received by the number of treatments they were eligible to receive. Defect-free care was defined as receipt of seven stroke performance measures when eligible, and included administration of IV tPA, use of antithrombotic therapy by end of hospital day two, administration of DVT prophylaxis, assessment for rehabilitation, discharge on antithrombotic therapy, discharge on lipid-lowering therapy, and discharge on anticoagulation therapy for atrial fibrillation.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Amongst 836 adults included in this study with a median age of 65, 58%, that's over half of the patients in this study, had some degree of cognitive impairment prior to their presenting stroke. 44% of patients with preexisting dementia received defect-free care as compared to 55% with either normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment. The difference, they did not reach statistical significance after adjusting for the sex, vascular comorbidities, and BMI in multivariate analysis. However, preexisting MCI remain an independent factor to be negatively associated with receipt of IV tPA echocardiogram and assessment for rehabilitation. Similarly, after adjusting for all confounders, preexisting dementia remained negatively associated with receipt of antithrombotic therapy by day two, lipid-lowering therapy at discharge, and receiving an echocardiogram. The authors highlighted their find...
Stroke Alert August 2021
Stroke Alert
08/19/21 • 26 min
On Episode 7 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the August 2021 issue of Stroke: “Stroke Risks in Adult Survivors of Preterm Birth: National Cohort and Cosibling Study” and “Roles of Phytoestrogen in the Pathophysiology of Intracranial Aneurysm.” She also interviews Drs. Nirav Bhatt and Diogo Haussen about their article “Reliability of Field Assessment Stroke Triage for Emergency Destination Scale Use by Paramedics: Mobile Stroke Unit First-Year Experience.”
Dr. Negar Asdaghi:
1) Can preterm birth be associated with increased risk of stroke in adulthood?
2) Can a plant-based diet high in phytoestrogens reduce the risk of aneurysm formation and aneurysmal rupture in postmenopausal women?
3) What is the predictive ability of FAST-ED score in detection of large vessel occlusion?
We will review these questions in today's podcast. You're listening to the Stroke Alert Podcast. Stay with us.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: From the Editorial Board of Stroke, welcome to the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. The August 2021 issue of Stroke covers a wide range of topics from examining if the presence of spot sign modifies the treatment effect of tranexamic acid in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage to the results of the PRESERVE randomized clinical trial examining whether intensive blood pressure lowering in patients with severe cerebral small vessel disease can be associated with progression of white matter damage as detected by diffusion tensor imaging or MRI studies, which I encourage you to review in addition to our podcast today.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Later in today's podcast, I have the pleasure of interviewing Drs. Diogo Haussen and Nirav Bhatt from Emory University on their work on reliability of FAST-ED scale when used by the paramedics in mobile stroke units and learn about the implementation of mobile stroke units in Atlanta. But first with these two articles.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Preterm birth, defined as birth prior to 37 weeks of gestation, affects approximately 11% of births worldwide. Today, with the advent of modern neonatal and pediatric care, the majority of preterm babies survive into adulthood. Multiple studies have shown that adult survivors of preterm birth are at increased risk of developing vascular risk factors, such as diabetes and hypertension, and have a higher incidence of ischemic heart disease as compared to their age-matched individuals born at term, though the association between preterm birth and risk of stroke is not well studied.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: In the current issue of the journal, Dr. Casey Crump from Departments of Family Medicine and Community Health and Population Health Science and Policy at Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York, examined whether preterm birth is associated with an increased risk of stroke and its major subtypes in adulthood. The authors use the prenatal and birth information obtained from the Swedish Birth Register, which contains information for nearly all births in Sweden since 1973. The study cohort included over 2,200,000 singleton live births in Sweden from 1973 to 1994. These years were chosen to allow for sufficient follow-up into adulthood. The study cohort was examined for the earliest diagnosis of stroke from the time the participants turned 18 through September 31, 2015, and the maximum age of included population is 43 years. Stroke was identified using ICD codes from all primary and secondary diagnosis in the Swedish Hospital and Outpatient Registries and all deaths attributed to stroke in the Swedish Death Register.
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Cosibling analyses assess for potential shared, familial confounding factors, such as genetic and environmental factors, that could contribute to development of stroke. In 28 million person-years of follow-up, 4861, or 0.2% persons, were diagnosed with stroke between 18 to 43 years of age. The authors found that low gestational age at birth was associated with a significantly higher risk of first-time stroke in adulthood. In their adjusted model, as compared to those born at full-term, the hazard ratio for any stroke associated with early preterm, that is birth between 22 to 33 weeks of gestation, was 1.4, and the hazard ratio for late preterm, that is birth between...
Stroke Alert November 2022
Stroke Alert
11/17/22 • 44 min
On Episode 22 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the November 2022 issue of Stroke: “Estimating Perfusion Deficits in Acute Stroke Patients Without Perfusion Imaging” and “Five-Year Results of Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting With or Without Carotid Endarterectomy in Patients With Asymptomatic Carotid Artery Stenosis.” She also interviews Dr. George Ntaios about his article “Incidence of Stroke in Randomized Trials of COVID-19 Therapeutics.”
Dr. Negar Asdaghi: Let's start with some questions.
1) What is the actual incidence of stroke after COVID-19?
2) In the setting of acute ischemic stroke, can the volume of ischemic penumbra be estimated with just a regular MRI study of the brain without any vascular or perfusion imaging?
3) And finally, can a patient with significant carotid stenosis go through coronary artery bypass graft surgery?
We're back here to answer these questions and bring us up to date with the latest in the world of cerebrovascular disorders. You're listening to the Stroke Alert Podcast, and this is the best in Stroke. Stay with us.
Welcome back to another issue of the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. The November issue of Stroke is packed with a range of really exciting and exceedingly timely articles. As part of our Original Contributions in this issue of the journal, we have a post hoc analysis of the Treat Stroke to Target, or the TST, randomized trial by Dr. Pierre Amarenco and colleagues. We've talked about this trial in our past podcast, and the main study results that were published in New England Journal of Medicine in January of 2020. TST randomized patients with a recent stroke or TIA to either a low target of LDL cholesterol of less than 70 milligram per deciliter or a target LDL of 90 to 110. The main study showed that the low LDL target group had a significantly lower risk of subsequent cardiovascular events without increasing the risk of hemorrhagic stroke. So, from this, we know that achieving a low target LDL is possible and is actually better than the LDL target of 90 to 110 post-stroke.
But in the new paper, in this issue of the journal, in a post hoc analysis of the trial, the TST investigators showed that it's not just achieving that magic low target LDL of less than 70 that's important in a reduction of cerebrovascular disorders, but it's also how we achieve it that determines the future of vascular outcomes. So, in this analysis that compared patients on monostatin therapy to those treated with dual cholesterol-lowering agents, that would be a combination of statin and ezetimibe, and showed that in the low LDL target group, only those patients treated with dual therapy had a significant reduction of subsequent vascular events as compared to those in the higher LDL category.
But the same was not true for patients on statin monotherapy, even though they had all achieved a low target LDL. Think about this for a moment. Both groups, whether on statin monotherapy or on dual anti-cholesterol treatments, achieved the same low target of LDL, but only those on dual therapy had a lower risk of subsequent vascular events as compared to those that were in the higher LDL target group. Very thought-provoking study.
In a separate paper by Dr. Shin and colleagues out of Korea, we learned that survivors of tuberculosis, or TB, are at a significantly higher risk of ischemic stroke than their age- and risk factors–matched non-TB counterparts. The authors used data from the Korean National Health Insurance Services and studied over 200,000 cases diagnosed with TB between 2010 and 2017 and compared them to a pool of over one million non-TB cases for matching. And they found that the risk of ischemic stroke was 1.2 times greater among TB survivors compared to matched non-TB cases after adjusting for the usual confounders, health behavioral factors, and other comorbidities.
Now, why would TB increase the risk of stroke? The authors talk about the pro-inflammatory state of this condition, thrombocytosis, that is a known complication of chronic TB amongst other putative and less clear mechanisms. But what is clear is that findings from a large-scale population-based cohort such as the current study support ...
Stroke Alert October 2024
Stroke Alert
10/17/24 • 58 min
On Episode 45 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the October 2024 issue of Stroke: “Cigarette Smoking and Observed Growth of Unruptured Intracranial Aneurysms: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis” and “Clinical and Prognostic Characteristics of Acute BAD–Related Stroke: A Multicenter MRI–Based Prospective Study.” She also interviews Dr. Vignan Yogendrakumar about his article “Emerging Adjuvant Thrombolytic Therapies for Acute Ischemic Stroke Reperfusion.”
For the episode transcript, visit: https://www.ahajournals.org/do/10.1161/podcast.20241007.116951
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Stroke Alert currently has 52 episodes available.
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The podcast is about Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Medicine, Neurology, Podcasts and Science.
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The episode title 'Stroke Alert June 2024' is the most popular.
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The average episode length on Stroke Alert is 45 minutes.
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Episodes of Stroke Alert are typically released every 28 days.
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The first episode of Stroke Alert was released on Mar 2, 2021.
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