• J Stroke Cerebrovasc Dis · Nov 2008

    The incidence of stroke mimics among stroke department admissions in relation to age group.

    • Patrick C A J Vroomen, Marieke K Buddingh, Gert Jan Luijckx, and Jacques De Keyser.
    • Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. vroomen@neuro.umcg.nl
    • J Stroke Cerebrovasc Dis. 2008 Nov 1; 17 (6): 418-22.

    BackgroundAcute stroke therapies are effective but may have serious adverse effects. This makes an accurate diagnosis mandatory. Acute stroke is diagnosed on the basis of neurologic findings, laboratory testing, and a computed tomography scan of the brain. This is the first study to investigate the incidence of stroke mimics beyond the triaging stage and just before therapy decisions across age groups.MethodsIn all, 669 consecutive patients assessed at the emergency department by a neurologist were admitted to the stroke department with a provisional diagnosis of stroke. Patient registries of possible mimics were cross-referenced.ResultsIn all, 637 patients (95.2%) had a correct diagnosis of stroke. A total of 15 patients turned out to have migraine with prolonged aura, 13 had a conversion disorder, 4 had partial epilepsy, and one was hypoglycemic. Under the age of 50 years, stroke mimics occurred in 21% of 87 patients. Above the age of 50 years, stroke mimics were very rare (3% of 583 patients).ConclusionsIn patients being considered for acute stroke interventions, stroke mimics need to be considered particularly when the patient is younger than 50 years. In older patients, features typical of stroke mimics do not rule out a stroke.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…