• Lukas Meyer, Gabriel Broocks, Matthias Bechstein, Fabian Flottmann, Hannes Leischner, Caspar Brekenfeld, Gerhard Schön, Milani Deb-Chatterji, Anna Alegiani, Götz Thomalla, Jens Fiehler, Helge Kniep, Uta Hanning, and German Stroke Registry – Endovascular Treatment (GSR – ET).
• Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany lu.meyer@uke.de.
• J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. 2020 Oct 1; 91 (10): 1055-1059.

Background And PurposeTo investigate early clinical surrogates for long-term independency of patients treated with thrombectomy for large vessel occlusion stroke in daily clinical routine.MethodsAll patients with anterior circulation stroke enrolled in the German Stroke Registry-Endovascular Treatment from 07/2015 to 04/2018 were analysed. National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) on admission, NIHSS percentage change, NIHSS delta and NIHSS at 24 hours as well as existing binary definitions of early neurological improvement (ENI; improvement of 8 (major ENI)/10 (dramatic ENI) NIHSS points or reaching 0/1 were compared for predicting functional outcome at 90 days using the modified Rankin Scale (mRS). Excellent and favourable outcome were defined as 0-1 and 0-2, respectively.ResultsAmong 2262 endovasculary treated patients with acute ischaemic anterior circulation stroke, NIHSS at 24 hours had the highest discriminative ability to predict excellent (receiver operator characteristics (ROC)NIHSS 24 hours area under the curve (AUC) 0.86 (0.84-0.88)) and favourable long-term functional outcome (ROCNIHSS 24 hours AUC 0.86 (0.85-0.88)) in comparison to NIHSS percentage change (ROC% change AUC mRS ≤1: 0.81 (0.78-0.83) mRS ≤2: 0.81 (0.79-0.83)), NIHSS delta change (ROCΔ change AUC mRS ≤1: 0.74 (0.72-0.77), mRS ≤2: 0.77 (0.74-0.79)) and NIHSS admission (ROCAdm AUC mRS ≤1: 0.70 (0.68-0.73), mRS ≤2: 0.67 (0.68-0.71)). Advanced age was the only independent predictor (adjusted OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.07, p<0.001) for turning the outcome prognosis from favourable (mRS ≤2) to poor (mRS ≥4) at 90 days.ConclusionThe NIHSS at 24 hours postintervention with a threshold of ≤8 points serves best as a surrogate for long-term functional outcome after thrombectomy for anterior circulation stroke in daily clinical practice. Only advanced age significantly decreases its predictive value.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

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