The faster a patient can have cerebrovascular thrombectomy, the better the odds of disability-free outcome.

GCS-motor only predicted as well as the full GCS score.

Unless your patient population has a much higher prevalence of disease that the Perry study and the meta-analysis last month, a negative head CT rules out SAH.

Intensive BP lowering did not improve outcome in patients with ICH.

This outstanding meta-analysis gets us closer than ever to the answer of LP after negative CT for SAH.

Short Attention Span Summary If you are a little cray-cray before your concussion, you complain of symptoms longer than if you’re not.  Pre-injury somatization symptom score was the best predictor of post-concussive symptom duration. FOAM Report Twitter Facebook Med Page Today Abstract Neurology. 2016 May 17;86(20):1856-63. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000002679. Epub 2016 Apr 20. Preinjury somatization symptoms […]

Short Attention Span Summary In this meta-analysis focusing on time since TIA, early use of aspirin after TIA reduced the incidence of recurrent stroke at 6 weeks by 60%, NNT = 72.  The hazard ratio for those receiving aspirin vs control from 0-2 weeks was 0.07, NNT = 269.  This is a dramatically reduced risk. […]

Short Attention Span Summary It makes sense that patients on antiplatelet agents with spontaneous ICH would benefit from transfusion of new, sticky platelets.  But this multicenter study found that it increased the odds of death or dependence at 3 months by 105% (Odds ratio 2.05).  And more in the transfusion group died while still in […]

Short Attention Span Summary Low dose (0.6mg/kg) tPA was found to be (barely) inferior to standard dose (0.9mg/kg) tPA in regard to the primary outcome of death or severe disability at 90 days, but there were fewer bleeds (1% vs 2.1%) in the low-dose group.  This was predominantly an Asian population, which limits generalizability. FOAM […]