Published online before print November 26, 2008, doi: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.108.523209
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(Stroke. 2009;40:394.)
© 2009 American Heart Association, Inc.
Original Contributions |
Incidence and 10-Year Survival of Intracerebral Hemorrhage in a Population-Based Registry
From the Department of Neurology (S.S., C.M., L.O., A.C.), University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy; and the Department of Neurological Sciences (D.T.), Università La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
Correspondence to Antonio Carolei, MD, FAHA, Clinica Neurologica, Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Sanità Pubblica, Università degli Studi di L'Aquila, Piazzale Salvatore Tommasi 1, 67010 L'Aquila, Italy. E-mail a_carolei{at}yahoo.com
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Abstract |
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Background and Purpose— The purpose of this study was to evaluate the incidence and prognosis of intracerebral hemorrhage.
Methods— We analyzed data referring to our prospective population-based registry, including patients with a first-ever stroke followed up to 10 years.
Results— In a 5-year period, we included 549 patients (247 men and 302 women; mean age±SD, 73.6±12.5 years) with an intracerebral hemorrhage. The crude annual incidence rate was 36.9 per 100000 (95% CI, 33.8 to 40.0), 32.9 per 100000 when standardized to the 2006 European population, and 15.9 per 100000 when standardized to the world population. The case-fatality rate was 34.6% (95% CI, 30.6 to 38.6) at 7 days; it increased to 50.3% (95% CI, 46.1 to 54.5) at 30 days and to 59.0% (95% CI, 54.9 to 63.1) at 1 year. Diabetes mellitus and posterior fossa hemorrhage were associated with an increased risk of 7- and 30-day mortality, whereas older age was associated with an increased risk of 30-day mortality only. At the Kaplan-Meier analysis, the 10-year survival rate was 24.1% (95% CI, 20.1 to 28.1).
Conclusions— Intracerebral hemorrhage is characterized by a severe prognosis, mostly in the short term. Because of the high proportion of fatal events that occurs early after the stroke, it is mandatory to identify and apply specific therapeutic strategies for patients with intracerebral hemorrhage.
Key Words: incidence • intracerebral hemorrhage • prognosis • stroke
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Introduction |
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Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) accounts for 6.5% to 19.6% of all strokes and is characterized by high mortality.1,2 Several studies have been undertaken to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics of ICH, but data referring to the Italian population are scanty.3 Moreover, data from a large and methodologically rigorous study may provide robust estimates. Definition of incidence rates, impact of known risk factors, and mortality are relevant to plan health services and to define national and international guidelines for the management of the disease.4,5 Moreover, few studies included a long-term follow-up of such patients, particularly useful to understand the natural history of the disease.6 None of those studies refer to the Italian population.
The aim of our study is to assess incidence, risk factors, case-fatality rates, and 10-year survival of patients with ICH in a population-based stroke registry in central Italy.
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Methods |
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Study Design and Population
Incidence and 10-year prognosis of ICH were evaluated in patients included in a 5-year period (1994 to 1998) in the prospective, population-based L'Aquila registry, which complies with epidemiological criteria for stroke incidence studies.1,2,7 The study was approved by the institutional ethics committee and complies with national rules on informed consent of subjects involved in the study. Definitions of risk factors were detailed in a previous paper.2 The L'Aquila district is a delimited mountainous area of 5034.46 km2 of the Abruzzo region in central Italy.2 Globally, there are 108 towns, 97 rural and 11 urban. The resident population, estimated from the 1991 and 2001 census data, is 297645 (48% rural) and was calculated as the linear projection to the midstudy period based on the observed trend between 1991 and 2001 censuses.3,8,9 The population remained stable across the study period with very little migration in and out of the district. The population is served by 8 public hospitals, 8 private hospitals, 233 general practitioners, and 89 on-call physicians. Medical care is completely free of charge, allowing easy access to medical services within the acute phase of stroke.
Definitions
Stroke was defined as rapidly developing signs of focal or global disturbance of cerebral function, lasting longer than 24 hours or leading to death, with no apparent cause other than that of vascular origin.10 ICH (code 431, International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision) was defined as a neurological deficit documented by brain CT or MRI showing the presence of an ICH. In the absence of brain neuroimaging or necropsy examination, a diagnosis of probable ICH was made in the presence of clinical manifestations reflecting increased intracranial pressure such as headache and vomiting, decreased alertness or coma, and gradual progression to death within 24 hours of onset.11,12 Secondary ICHs were diagnosed in the presence of ruptured aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, tumors, venous thrombosis, trauma, anticoagulation, or other known causes of ICHs. Patients who could not be categorized as ischemic, hemorrhagic, or due to subarachnoid hemorrhage because of the absence of adequate clinical signs or symptoms, and confirmatory investigations were included among those with ill-defined or unclassified cerebrovascular events (International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision codes 436 to 437). Codes of the Application of the International Classification of Diseases to Neurology were applied to patients who had brain neuroimaging.13 Those cases were classified as lobar when the bleeding occurred in the frontal, temporal, parietal, or occipital lobes; deep when the bleeding involved subcortical structures; posterior fossa when the bleeding was located in the brainstem or in the cerebellum; and as intraventricular or multiple localized when appropriate.
Recruitment and Follow-Up
All events were identified by active monitoring of all inpatient and outpatient health services. In each clinical ward, all patients admitted for a cerebrovascular event were identified and examined by a senior physician. Thereafter, all patients were seen by a consulting neurologist to validate the event. To verify all admitted patients with stroke, 8 consulting neurologists screened the admission and discharge lists on a daily basis. Nearby hospitals were regularly monitored to identify those residents who had crossboundary medical care. The records of patients with dizziness, vertigo, confusion, seizures, headache, and transient global amnesia were also reviewed. Neuroradiology, neurophysiology, and neurosonology services were systematically checked. Regular contacts were also maintained with rehabilitation and long-term care services.
The study purpose was explained in advance to all general practitioners and on-call physicians who were asked to refer all stroke cases or give information about patients evaluated at home. Death certificates were checked monthly, and clinical details of all patients who died with a diagnosis of stroke or with a diagnosis of probable ICH were reviewed.
All cases were followed up with quarterly planned visits or with a structured telephone interview up to December 31, 2005; moreover, death certificates were checked to identify the causes of death of patients who died. Outcome events were represented by death from vascular or nonvascular causes. In particular, cerebral death was defined as death occurring within or after 30 days of the onset of signs or symptoms of the qualifying stroke or of a new stroke with clinically proven brain herniation in the absence of other intervening causes. Because patients were included in a population-based registry, during the study, no compulsory treatment was adopted, although strict adherence to current guidelines for medical and surgical treatment was encouraged.
Statistical Analyses
Incidence rates were standardized by age and sex with the direct method to the 2006 European population and to the 2005 world population.14,15 Poisson regression analysis was performed to evaluate the linear relation between incidence rates of ICH and year of inclusion in the registry. Student t test was used to compare group means. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the association between deep and lobar hemorrhages and prevalence of vascular risk factors. Survival after the stroke was estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and comparisons between groups were performed by means of the log rank test. Multivariate estimates of the hazard ratios (HRs) were calculated according to the Cox regression analysis. Two-sided values of P<0.05 were considered to indicate significance. All analyses were performed with the SPSS (Version 10.1).
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Results |
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Of 4353 patients with a first-ever stroke, 53 (1.2%) had ill-defined or unclassified cerebrovascular events and 588 (13.5%) had an ICH. Of them, 561 (95.1%) patients were hospitalized, whereas 27 (4.9%) died at home. Thirty-nine (6.6%) patients were excluded from the study because medical history and brain neuroimaging indicated a secondary ICH. ICH was confirmed by brain neuroimaging (CT, 435 [93.8%]; MRI, 19 [4.1%]; and both, 10 [2.1%]) in 464 (84.5%) patients, whereas in the remaining 58 (10.6%) hospitalized patients not submitted to neuroimaging and in the 27 (4.9%) patients who died before hospitalization, a probable ICH was diagnosed according to our predefined criteria. Hence, the object of this study were 549 patients with ICH (mean±SD age, 73.6±12.5 years), of whom 247 (45.0%) were men (mean±SD age, 70.5±13.1 years) and 302 (55.0%) were women (mean±SD age, 76.1±11.5 years; P<0.0001). Patients with ICH confirmed by neuroimaging were younger than patients who were not submitted to neuroimaging (71.9±12.3 versus 82.2±10.6 years; P<0.0001).
Crude annual incidence rate for a first-ever ICH was 36.9 per 100000 (95% CI, 33.8 to 40.0), 32.9 per 100000 when standardized to the 2006 European population, and 15.9 per 100000 when standardized to the world population. Age- and sex-specific incidence rates (Table 1) increased sharply with age in both sexes and were higher in women than in men; incidence rates were higher in men than in women in all age groups but older than 75 years of age. They were approximately 7 times higher in patients older than 85 years (309.8 per 100000) with respect to patients in the 55- to 64-year age group (41.8 per 100000) and 3 times higher with respect to patients in the 65- to 74-year age group (98.0 per 100000). During the study period, the incidence rate was 38.3 per 100000 in 1994, 38.6 per 100000 in 1995, 30.6 per 100000 in 1996, 36.0 per 100000 in 1997, and 41.0 per 100000 in 1998 at the Poisson regression analysis (slope=1.01; P=0.995). In the 464 patients with ICH confirmed by neuroimaging, the crude annual incidence rate was 31.18 per 100000, 27.96 per 100000 when standardized to the 2006 European population, and 14.15 per 100000 when standardized to the 2005 world population.
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According to the Application of the International Classification of Diseases to Neurology (Table 2) that was applied to the 464 patients with ICH confirmed by brain neuroimaging, 210 (45.3%) were lobar, 205 (44.2%) deep, 44 (9.4%) were in the posterior fossa (16 involved the brainstem and 28 the cerebellum), and 5 (1.1%) involved more than one ventricle (n=4) or were multiple localized (n=1). Proportions of lobar and deep hemorrhages were similar in the different age and sex groups.
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Arterial hypertension was present in 415 of 549 patients (75.6%) and was more common in patients with deep (83.3%) than in those with lobar (72.9%) hemorrhage (OR, 0.5; 95% CI, 0.3 to 0.9).
As shown in Table 3, 190 patients (34.6%; 95% CI, 30.6 to 38.6) died within 7 days, 276 (50.3%; 95% CI, 46.1 to 54.5) within 30 days, and 324 (59.0%; 95% CI, 54.9 to 63.1) within 1 year. Most of the deaths that occurred within the first 7 days were cerebral (98.4%).
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Multivariate Cox regression analysis, including age, sex, and location of the hemorrhage as covariates (Table 4), showed an increased 7- and 30-day mortality associated with diabetes mellitus (HR, 1.86 for 7-day mortality and 1.82 for 30-day mortality) and posterior fossa hemorrhage (HR, 1.89 for 7-day mortality and 1.69 for 30-day mortality), whereas age was associated with 30-day mortality only (HR, 1.18). On the opposite, the presence of hypercholesterolemia was associated with a lower 7-day mortality (HR, 0.55). Associations were the same after excluding from the analyses the 85 patients without brain neuroimaging.
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As shown in the Figure, the overall 10-year survival was 24.1% (95% CI, 20.1 to 28.1), whereas, according to site of ICH, it was 31.6% in deep hemorrhages, 23.8% in lobar hemorrhages, and 34.3% in posterior fossa hemorrhages (P=0.0947; log rank test).
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Discussion |
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In this study on a large cohort of patients prospectively included in the population-based L'Aquila registry and followed up to 10 years, we found a proportion of ICHs (13.5%) similar to that reported in other registries and lower than that reported in the Japanese population.1,16,17 We also found a 32.9 per 100000 European standardized annual incidence rate of ICH that was similar to rates reported in comparable studies.1,16–24 We might speculate that the 27.96 per 100000 standardized annual incidence rate, referring to patients with ICH confirmed by neuroimaging, underestimates the real burden of the disease. Variations in incidence rates are commonly attributed to different methodology, demographics, and ethnic characteristics of the studied populations as well as to differences in the management of risk factors and health conditions.13,16–24 As shown by the Poisson regression analysis, no significant incidence change could be detected, reflecting stability of the population and adherence to guidelines of primary prevention within the 5-year study period. However, we cannot exclude that changes of the incidence rates might have occurred after the end of the inclusion period so that the reported rates might not correspond to the current figure. We also found that lobar (45.3%) and deep (44.2%) hemorrhages were equally represented, whereas posterior fossa hemorrhages in the brainstem (3.4%) and in the cerebellum (6.0%) were far less frequent. The high proportion of lobar hemorrhages might be, at least in part, attributed to the old age of patients included in the present study.
As expected, arterial hypertension was the most common risk factor for ICH, being present in over three fourths of our patients. Its prevalence was higher in patients with deep (83.3%) than in those with lobar (72.9%) hemorrhage, but not as much as 2-fold more common in the former than in the latter as reported in a recent review.25 However, since those studies cumulatively included a total of 601 patients,25–28 we think that our 464 patients with brain neuroimaging could provide a useful contribution to the issue. Our case-fatality rate for ICH was among the highest ever reported as a predictable consequence of the higher mean age of our patients.1,17,18 Moreover, because all patients diagnosed as probable ICH died early, we cannot exclude that their inclusion may have biased the fatality rates. However, case-fatality rates were also high in patients with ICH confirmed by neuroimaging but lower than in the comparable studies.21,22 The higher mortality of patients with probable ICH with respect to patients with ICH confirmed by neuroimaging might have depended on their older age and on the burden of comorbidities.
In our study, factors accounting for mortality in the short term after ICH were represented by diabetes mellitus, posterior fossa location of the bleeding, and older age, but not arterial hypertension. Hypercholesterolemia was related to a lower 7-day mortality, a figure not easily explainable, which adds to the controversial issue of the relationship between cholesterol levels and risk of brain hemorrhage.29–31
As shown by the Kaplan-Meier analysis, we found a 24.1% (95% CI, 20.1 to 28.1) survival at 10 years. This proportion was lower than the 31% (95% CI, 17% to 45%) reported in a comparable study, whose estimate was characterized by a wider CI; we cannot exclude that the better long-term survival might be attributed to the younger age.6
Our series represents the largest group of patients with ICH followed up to 10 years. However, the study has some limitations despite the methodology we adopted matched the required criteria for comparable population-based stroke studies.1 Studies aimed to assess the epidemiology of ICH need to identify all incident cases, including also patients treated at home or those who die before or shortly after hospital admission without performing brain neuroimaging.1,2 However, although hospital-based studies are mainly biased by the exclusion of the most severe cases, population-based studies, which include also patients who die prematurely before a confirmatory brain neuroimaging, are at risk of including cases without the disease of interest. Hence, we may have included some patients with secondary ICH, subarachnoid hemorrhage, hemorrhagic transformation of a cerebral infarction, ischemic stroke, or even nonstroke cases. However, had we excluded those patients (15.5%), we might have underestimated both incidence and case-fatality rates of ICH. Obviously, our study may have missed asymptomatic cases. In any case, the adoption of strict and predefined diagnostic criteria should have minimized any inclusion bias. On the other hand, the large number of included patients, the large proportion of patients who underwent neuroimaging, and the 10-year follow-up give strength to our data.
In conclusion, our population-based study shows that ICH is characterized by a severe prognosis mostly in the short term. Because of the high proportion of fatal events that occurs early after the stroke, it is mandatory to identify and apply specific therapeutic strategies for patients with ICH.
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Acknowledgments |
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Source of Funding
This study was supported by a grant (CNR 96.03027.CT04) from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy.
Disclosures
None.
Received April 16, 2008; revision received June 9, 2008; accepted June 24, 2008.
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