The role of extracranial carotid duplex in predicting functional outcome in first time lacunae strokes.

BACKGROUND: Stroke is the third largest cause of death both worldwide and in Taiwan. Among the various stroke subtypes, lacunae strokes account for 20 to 30% of the total stroke population. Through vigorous risk control factors, the effective prevention and the long-term functional outcome remains are yet to be investigated. Carotid duplex is a non-invasive neuroimaging modality that is routinely applied to stroke patients. In the current research, we correlate baseline carotid duplex examination parameters with functional outcome assessment in an attempt to ascertain important variables for early outcome prediction. METHOD: We retrospectively recruited lacunae ischemic stroke patients from the Department of Neurology, Changhua Christian Hospital. Patient baseline demographics, biochemistry, neuroimaging, and outcome assessments were thoroughly evaluated via a modified Rankin Scale (mRS), NIHSS, and Barthel index scores, both prior and subsequent to patient discharge for a period of up to one year. Patients were divided into two groups based on their functional recovery status. This current study utilizes the Kaplan-Meier method to draw the survival curve and adopts the Cox proportional hazards model to estimate the hazard ratio between the two groups. The risk modeling method is also applied to formulate the best fit in seeking and identifying the variables, which has the most impact on determining theoutcome predictor. All statistical analyses were performed using R for Windows (version 3.6.3), with p < 0.05 meaning statistical significance and 0.05 < p < 0.1 denoting marginal statistical significance. RESULTS: One hundred forty-one ischemic lacunae stroke patients are included in the study, of which the follow-ups of 69 patients showed no physical functionality improvement, whereas 72 patients demonstrated favorable functional outcomes. In terms of underlying diseases, more than 80% of the patients suffered from hyperlipidemia upon hospitalization and more than 40% of the patients suffered from diabetes mellitus and heart disease. There was a significant difference in pulmonary disease between improvement and non-improvement in disability (1.4% vs 10.1%, p = 0.034). The average age of the improved group was lower than that of the non-improved group (65.5 vs. 72, p = 0.014), and the WBC was higher (8 vs 6.95, p = 0.005); furthermore, higher NIHSS scores (6.5 vs 3, p = 0.001) and lower Barthel index scores (47.5 vs 80, p < 0.001) were also noted. The group with improved mRS required a longer hospital stay (with a median of 10 days), while their un-improved counterpart required 8 days (p < 0.05). The majority of patients were discharged within 30 days, and there was a slight difference between the two survival curves (marginal statistical significance, 0.05 < p < 0.1). The hazard ratio of the improved group was 0.7188. There was a difference in the end diastolic velocity (EDV) of common carotid artery (CCA) between the lesion and non-lesion sides of the patients (p < 0.05). Risk-stratifying models indicate that diabetes mellitus, peak systolic velocity (PSV) of the internal carotid artery (ICA) on the lesion side, the diameter of the ICA on the non-lesion side, and the pulsatility index (PI) of the ICA and external carotid artery (ECA) were selected as the most important factors affecting the end diastolic velocity (EDV) of the common carotid artery (CCA) in all four models. CONCLUSION: In the current study, the most suitable length of stay in hospital for lacunae stroke patients to fully recuperate is ten days. Additionally, CCA EDV might be the key determinant, with baseline diabetes mellitus acting in a medium role, capable of altering long-term outcome functionality and recovery.

Functional outcome prediction of ischemic stroke patients with atrial fibrillation accepting post-acute care training.

Background: Ischemic stroke poses a major threat to human health and represents the third leading cause of death worldwide and in Taiwan. Post-acute care (PAC) training has been reported to be beneficial for post-index stroke events. However, knowledge is still lacking on the outcome of stroke events with cardiac origin. The focus of the current study is to investigate the effectiveness of PAC in this subgroup of patients as well as identify key baseline pointers that are capable of early prediction of patients' physical recovery. In addition, the authors hypothesize that the routinely arranged non-invasive carotid duplex that evaluates the characteristics of the carotid lumen could play a significant role in providing an early outcome prediction. Methods: For the current research, 142 ischemic stroke patients with underlying cardiac arrhythmia (atrial fibrillation) were retrospectively recruited. The patients' basic demographics, neuroimaging, carotid duplex, and basic biochemistry datasets were accurately documented. The pre and post-admission National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) (6-month follow-ups), Barthel Index, and mRS score (12-month follow-ups) were also recorded. All statistical analyses were performed using R for Windows (version 3.6.3). Barthel Index, NIHSS, and mRS scores obtained before and after hospitalization were compared to determine the patients' outcomes and were classified as improved or unimproved. A multivariate logistic analysis was designed and applied to assess the significance of risk factors and to obtain the odds ratios (ORs). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the Youden Index was used to find the important cut-off point information, and the area under the curve (AUC) was calculated to provide accuracy. Results: The average age of the 142 ischemic stroke patients enrolled in the current study was about 66 years, of which 88 patients were male and 54, female. Many of them had other comorbidities: 86 patients had mixed hyperlipidemia (60.56%), 115 had hypertension (80.99%), and 49 suffered from diabetes mellitus (34.51%). The mRS showed an improvement in the condition of only 40 patients (28.175%), whereas the Barthel Index showed improvement in 71 patients (50%), and 68 patients (47.89%) showed recovery on the NIHSS. The Barthel Index and NIHSS were selected because they already had an almost equal number of samples among the improved and unimproved groups (50%), rather than mRS, which had a lower number (28.17%) of improved cases. While conducting the EuroQol-5 Dimension (EQ-5D) assessment, anxiety/depression stood out as the most prominent issue, affecting 44 patients (30.99%). Self-care was another factor that was involved in the ongoing improvement of 36 patients (25.35%). Multivariate logistic analysis of both NIHSS and Barthel Index showed improvement with a contralateral plaque index statistical significance (P<0.05), whereas NIHSS showed a relevant significance in anxiety/depression and Barthel Index registered usual activity in the data analysis (P<0.05). ROC curve and Youden index analysis showed similar results in both NIHSS and Barthel Index of contralateral plaque index of 4.5, this being the cutoff point value for this group of patients. Conclusion: In the current study, nearly half of the enrolled patients showed favorable functional recovery. The outcome assessments seem to correlate well with NIHSS and Barthel Index scores, rather than mRS. The anxiety/depression and usual activities domains of the EQ-5D results are associated with and have a great impact after the patients undertake the PAC rehabilitative strategy. Moreover, the variables obtained through carotid duplex and plaque index might also play a significant role in determining the patient's functional outcome.

A numerical scheme for the ground state of rotating spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates.

We study the existence of nontrivial solution branches of three-coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations (CGPEs), which are used as the mathematical model for rotating spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). The Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction is exploited to test the branching of nontrivial solution curves from the trivial one in some neighborhoods of bifurcation points. A multilevel continuation method is proposed for computing the ground state solution of rotating spin-1 BEC. By properly choosing the constraint conditions associated with the components of the parameter variable, the proposed algorithm can effectively compute the ground states of spin-1 [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] under rapid rotation. Extensive numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. In particular, the affect of the magnetization on the CGPEs is investigated.