Using the ICH score during acute telestroke consults to triage transfer to tertiary centers.

OBJECTIVE: Constrained resources at tertiary centers indicate a need for re-exploration of the practice of routinely transferring all community hospital patients with complex conditions such as hemorrhagic stroke (ICH). We addressed the clinical question of whether information available during acute care telestroke consults could identify ICH patients not requiring specialty services or neurosurgical intervention who could safely remain at the local center for care. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort analysis abstracting clinical factors to identify ICH patients associated with need for tertiary care or neurosurgical intervention. SETTING: The Duke Telestroke Network (DTN) in Central NC and Southern Virginia. PATIENTS: All DTN transferred ICH patients January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2018. INTERVENTIONS: We defined neurosurgical intervention as craniotomy, digital subtraction angiography, or external ventricular drain placement. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: We identified 116 transferred ICH patients. Sixty-two were female, the median Glasgow coma score (GCS) was 13, and the median ICU and hospital length of stay were 2 and 7 days respectively. Thirty of the patients were offered and 27 ultimately received neurosurgical intervention. Using inclusion/exclusion criteria from two ICH surgical trials would have increased the intervention group to 35 patients (30%). Components of the ICH score differentiated surgical from non-surgical patients; patients with an ICH score of <2 and GCS ≥13 received no interventions. Nearly 50% of patients could receive medical management locally. CONCLUSIONS: Coupling the ICH score and GCS can provide triage guidance identifying patients for retention at the referring center. This retained population is distinct from patients eligible for current or novel surgical interventions. This approach provides a framework for assessment of transfers across specialty areas and furthers the value of telehealth networks.

Electrographic Seizure Detection by Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit Nurses via Bedside Real-Time Quantitative EEG.

OBJECTIVE: Our primary objective was to determine the performance of real-time neuroscience intensive care unit (neuro-ICU) nurse interpretation of quantitative EEG (qEEG) at the bedside for seizure detection. Secondary objectives included determining nurse time to seizure detection and assessing factors that influenced nurse accuracy. METHODS: Nurses caring for neuro-ICU patients undergoing continuous EEG (cEEG) were trained using a 1-hour qEEG panel (rhythmicity spectrogram and amplitude-integrated EEG) bedside display. Nurses' hourly interpretations were compared with post hoc cEEG review by 2 neurophysiologists as the gold standard. Diagnostic performance, time to seizure detection compared with standard of care (SOC), and effects of other factors on nurse accuracy were calculated. RESULTS: A total of 109 patients and 65 nurses were studied. Eight patients had seizures during the study period (7%). Nurse sensitivity and specificity for the detection of seizures were 74% and 92%, respectively. Mean nurse time to seizure detection was significantly shorter than SOC by 132 minutes (Cox proportional hazard ratio 6.96). Inaccurate nurse interpretation was associated with increased hours monitored and presence of brief rhythmic discharges. CONCLUSIONS: This prospective study of real-time nurse interpretation of qEEG for seizure detection in neuro-ICU patients showed clinically adequate sensitivity and specificity. Time to seizure detection was less than that of SOC. TRIAL REGISTRATION INFORMATION: Clinical trial registration number NCT02082873. CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE: This study provides Class I evidence that neuro-ICU nurse interpretation of qEEG detects seizures in adults with a sensitivity of 74% and a specificity of 92% compared with traditional cEEG review.

Autoimmune Encephalitis: NMDA Receptor Encephalitis as an Example of Translational Neuroscience.

Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) is a group of disorders causing synaptic receptor dysfunction with a broad range of neurological symptoms that has been historically difficult to differentiate clinically. Today, AE represents an excellent example of the rapid determination of the cause of a disease and the ability to identify potential treatments using relatively simple basic science techniques of investigation. Of the number of autoimmune encephalitides identified thus far, one of the best examples of the impact of basic science studies on disease management is NMDA receptor mediated autoimmune encephalitis (NMDAr-AE). In this review, we will provide an overview of the epidemiology of NMDAr-AE, clinical features and treatments, and the basic science tools and techniques that were used to identify the cause, correlate symptoms to underlying pathophysiology, and to understand the mechanism of disease pathology.

External beam radiotherapy for head and neck cancers is associated with increased variability in retinal vascular oxygenation.

BACKGROUND: Radiation retinopathy is a possible post-treatment complication of radiation therapy. The pathophysiologic mechanism is hypothesized to be microvascular in origin, but evidence is limited. In an effort to study retinal oxygenation in these patients, we herein evaluate the repeatability and variability of retinal oximetry measurements in subjects who had previously received radiation and make comparisons to a cohort of unirradiated subjects. METHODS: Using retinal oximetry, a non-invasive imaging modality, we performed in vivo measurements of arteriole (SaO2) and venule SO2 (SvO2) in subjects (n = 9, 18 retinas) who had received incidental radiation to their retinas (≥ 45 Gy to one retina) and in healthy subjects (n = 20, 40 retinas). A total of 1367 SO2 observations on 593 vessels in 29 persons were analyzed to assess three sources of variance in vessel SO2: 1) variance in repeated measurements of the same vessel ("repeatability"), 2) variance in different vessels within the same subject ("within-subject variability"), and 3) variance between subjects ("between-subject variability"). RESULTS: Retinal oximetry measurements were highly repeatable in both irradiated patients and unirradiated subjects. The within-subject variability of SvO2 and SaO2 measurements constituted the highest component of variance in both groups and was significantly higher in venules vs. arterioles (relative effect size 1.8, p<0.001) and in irradiated subjects vs. unirradiated subjects (relative effect size 1.6, p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Retinal oximetry is a highly repeatable technology and can be reliably used to study vascular oxygenation in irradiated subjects. Different vessels within the same subject exhibit a high degree of variability, suggesting that pooled analyses of multiple vessels are most likely to be informative of regional retinal oxygenation. Finally, irradiated subjects exhibited significantly higher within-subject variability in SO2 measurements, suggesting that radiation may cause regional alterations in retinal oxygen delivery and/or metabolism.