Incontinence and gait disturbance after intraventricular extension of intracerebral hemorrhage.

OBJECTIVE: We tested the hypothesis that intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) is associated with incontinence and gait disturbance among survivors of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) at 3-month follow-ups. METHODS: The Genetic and Environmental Risk Factors for Hemorrhagic Stroke study was used as the discovery set. The Ethnic/Racial Variations of Intracerebral Hemorrhage study served as a replication set. Both studies performed prospective hot-pursuit recruitment of ICH cases with 3-month follow-up. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were computed to identify risk factors for incontinence and gait dysmobility at 3 months after ICH. RESULTS: The study population consisted of 307 ICH cases in the discovery set and 1,374 cases in the replication set. In the discovery set, we found that increasing IVH volume was associated with incontinence (odds ratio [OR] 1.50; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.10-2.06) and dysmobility (OR 1.58; 95% CI 1.17-2.15) after controlling for ICH location, initial ICH volume, age, baseline modified Rankin Scale score, sex, and admission Glasgow Coma Scale score. In the replication set, increasing IVH volume was also associated with both incontinence (OR 1.42; 95% CI 1.27-1.60) and dysmobility (OR 1.40; 95% CI 1.24-1.57) after controlling for the same variables. CONCLUSION: ICH subjects with IVH extension are at an increased risk for developing incontinence and dysmobility after controlling for factors associated with severity and disability. This finding suggests a potential target to prevent or treat long-term disability after ICH with IVH

Deriving Place of Residence, Modified Rankin Scale, and EuroQol-5D Scores from the Medical Record for Stroke Survivors

Introduction: We sought to determine the feasibility and validity of estimating post-stroke outcomes using information available in the electronic medical record (EMR) through comparison with outcomes obtained from telephone interviews. Methods: The Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Stroke Study is a retrospective population-based epidemiology study that ascertains hospitalized strokes in the study region. As a sub-study, we identified all ischemic stroke patients who presented to a system of 4 hospitals during the study period 1/1/2015–12/31/2015 and were discharged alive. Enrolled subjects (or proxies for cognitively-disabled patients) were contacted by telephone at 3 and 6 months post-stroke to determine current place of residence and two functional outcomes—the modified Rankin Score (mRS) and the EuroQol (EQ-5D). Concurrently, the lead study coordinator, blinded to the telephone assessment outcomes, reviewed all available EMRs to estimate outcome status. Agreement between outcomes estimated from the EMR with “gold-standard” data obtained from telephone interviews was analyzed using the kappa statistic or interclass correlation (ICC), as appropriate. For each outcome, EMR-determined results were evaluated for added value beyond the information readily available from the stroke hospital stay. Results: Of 381 ischemic strokes identified, 294 (median [IQR] age 70 [60–79] years, 4% black, 52% female) were interviewed post-stroke. Agreement between EMR and telephone for 3-month residence was very good (kappa=0.84, 95% CI 0.74–0.94), good for mRS (weighted kappa=0.75, 95% CI 0.70–0.80), and good for EQ-5D (ICC=0.74, 95% CI 0.68–0.79). Similar results were observed at 6 months post stroke. At both 3 and 6 months post stroke, EMR-determined outcomes added value in predicting the gold standard telephone results beyond the information available from the stroke hospitalization; the added fraction of new information ranged from 0.25 to 0.59. Conclusions: Determining place of residence, mRS, and EQ-5D outcomes derived from information recorded in the EMR post-stroke, without patient contact, is feasible and has good agreement with data obtained from direct contact. However, we note that the level of agreement for mRS and EQ-5D was higher for proxy interviews and that the EMR often reflects health care providers’ judgments that tend to overestimate disability and underestimate quality of life