• Kareem El Naamani, Abdelaziz Amllay, Ching-Jen Chen, Stephen Capone, Rawad Abbas, Georgios S Sioutas, Alfredo Munoz, Clifford J Yudkoff, Angeleah Carreras, Abhijeet Sambangi, Adam Hunt, Paarth Jain, Emily A Stine, Anish Sathe, Rupert Smit, Fouad Yazbeck, Stavropoula I Tjoumakaris, Michael R Gooch, Nabeel A Herial, Robert H Rosenwasser, Hekmat Zarzour, Richard F Schmidt, Mohammad El-Ghanem, and Pascal M Jabbour.
• Department of Neurological Surgery, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
• World Neurosurg. 2023 Feb 1; 170: e834e839e834-e839.

BackgroundOne of the defining narratives of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the acceptance and distribution of vaccine. To compare the outcomes of COVID-19 positive vaccinated and unvaccinated stroke patients.MethodsThis is a single-center retrospective study of COVID-19-vaccinated and unvaccinated stroke patients between April 2020 and March 2022. All patients presenting with stroke regardless of treatment modalities were included. National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale was used to assess stroke severity. The primary outcome was functional capacity of the patients at discharge.ResultsThe study cohort comprised 203 COVID-19 positive stroke patients divided into 139 unvaccinated and 64 fully vaccinated patients. At discharge, the modified Rankin scale score was significantly lower in the vaccinated cohort (3[1-4] vs. 4[2-5], odds ratio = 0.508, P = 0.011). At 3 months of follow-up, the median modified Rankin scale score was comparable between both cohorts.ConclusionsAlthough vaccination did not show any significant difference in stroke patient outcomes on follow-up, vaccines were associated with lower rates of morbidity and mortality at discharge among stroke patients during the pandemic.Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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