Clinical and electrocardiographic factors as mortality predictors in patients in the acute phase of a first cerebrovascular event

摘要

align="justify">Introduction: Stroke is the second cause of death and third cause of disability worldwide. Objective: To assess association between clinical and electrocardiographic variables, neurological scales in stroke patients like predictors of mortality at three months after hospital discharge. Subjects and methods: Prospective cohort with nonprobabilistic sampling, in patients over 18 years with first stroke. Demographic and clinical variables, neurological scales (NIHSS, Canadian), heart rate (HRV) and QT variability (QTV), QT dispersion were evaluated. Mortality was determined during the 3 months follow up. Bivariate and multiple logistic regression analysis were performed with mortality at three months after discharge as outcome. Variables were included in the model if they have low correlation (r0.4) and significant statistically p values (P 0.05). Results: 92 patients were included in the study, 13 patients died during the intra-hospital stay, 81 were followed at 3 months after their hospital discharge. Total mortality in patients included at three months follow-up was 21.7 % (n=20). We identified five predictors of mortality in the final model: NIHSS score, mean heart rate, VLF QT ≥36,311, LF/HF ≤ 1,019, extreme values of r-MSD (≥ 7,985 or ≤ 2,363) of HRV. The area under the curve (AUC) of the model was 0,95 with sensitivity of 60% and specificity of 93%. Conclusions: High NIHSS scores, VLF-QT, mean heart rate, low values of LF/HF and high extreme values of r-MSD were independent risk factors for mortality at 90 days after a first stroke.