Abstract
Objective: To compare access to intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and its outcomes in patients with and without dementia.
Methods: This was a longitudinal cohort study of the Swedish dementia and stroke registries. Patients with preexisting dementia who had AIS from 2010 to 2014 (n = 1,356) were compared with matched patients without dementia (n = 6,755). We examined access to thrombolysis and its outcomes at 3 months (death, residency, and modified Rankin Scale [mRS] score). Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated with logistic and ordinal logistic regression.
Results: The median age at stroke onset was 83 years in both groups. IVT was administered to 94 (7.0%) patients with dementia and 639 (9.5%) patients without dementia. The OR of receiving IVT was 0.68 (95% CI 0.54–0.86) for patients with dementia. When the analysis was repeated exclusively among patients independent in everyday activities, dementia status was no longer significant (OR 0.79, 95% CI 0.60–1.06). However, differences persisted in patients ≤80 years of age (OR 0.58, 95% CI 0.36–0.94). In patients who received thrombolysis, the incidence of symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (sICH; 7.4% vs 7.3%) and death at 3 months (22.0% vs 18.8%) did not differ significantly between the 2 groups. However, mRS score and accommodation status were worse among patients with dementia after 3 months in adjusted analyses (both p < 0.001). Unfavorable outcomes with an mRS score of 5 to 6 were doubled in patients with dementia (56.1% vs 28.1%).
Conclusions: Younger patients with dementia and AIS are less likely to receive IVT. Among patients receiving thrombolysis, there are no differences in sICH or death, although patients with dementia have worse accommodation and functional outcomes at 3 months.
GLOSSARY
- ADL=
- activities of daily living;
- AIS=
- acute ischemic stroke;
- ATC=
- Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical;
- CI=
- confidence interval;
- ICD-10=
- International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision;
- IVT=
- intravenous thrombolysis;
- MMSE=
- Mini-Mental State Examination;
- mRS=
- modified Rankin Scale;
- NIHSS=
- NIH Stroke Scale;
- OR=
- odds ratio;
- Riksstroke=
- Swedish national quality registry for acute vascular diseases of the brain;
- RLS=
- Reaction Level Scale;
- sICH=
- symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage;
- SveDem=
- Swedish Dementia Registry
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article. The Article Processing Charge was funded by Swedish Research Council and Johanniterorden i Sverige/Swedish Order of Saint John.
- Received March 29, 2017.
- Accepted in final form August 11, 2017.
- Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the American Academy of Neurology
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Disputes & Debates: Rapid online correspondence
REQUIREMENTS
If you are uploading a letter concerning an article:
You must have updated your disclosures within six months: http://submit.neurology.org
Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.
If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.
Submission specifications:
- Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
- Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.