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(Stroke. 2008;39:e2.)
© 2008 American Heart Association, Inc.

Letters to the Editor

Response to Letter by Sheikh

National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore

Fung-Peng Woon, MSc

National Heart Centre, Singapore

Christopher P.L.H Chen, FRCP

National University of Singapore, Singapore

Hui-Meng Chang, MRCP Meng-Cheong Wong, FRCP

National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Response:

We appreciate the comments by Dr Sheikh. In our research letter,¹ we studied the prevalence and associations of intracranial large-artery disease (ICLAD) among ethnic South Asians in Singapore. The cited reference "Global burden of intracranial atherosclerosis"² for the statement reading "ICLAD is the most common vascular lesion in stroke worldwide" was published in the International Journal of Stroke, the official journal of the World Stroke Organization (WSO), edited by Prof Geoffrey Donnan, current president of the WSO. It is not registered with PubMed Central as its first issue was only published in February 2006.

The method of data collection was prospective with results noted as investigations were performed, rather than a retrospective review of the medical records. The descriptive data of age and gender in the Table 1 relates to the 188 patients with ICLAD assessed, whereas the data in paragraph one of the results relates to the whole study population of 200 patients. As stated in the article, the 12 patients who did not have ICLAD status described underwent neither any/adequate TCCD assessment nor magnetic resonance angiography. The multivariate analysis used was a linear stepwise regression, and the statistical software used was SPSS version 9.0.

This was a cross-sectional study of ethnic South Asians in Singapore. As such, we did not and cannot directly compare the stated 54% prevalence of ICLAD with other ethnicities. We maintain that this burden is high in view of the published findings of 24% prevalence of intracranial lesions among white stroke patients.³ . . . [Full Text of this Article]