Publications by authors named "Kangho Choi"
Candida infections have become a growing concern to the immunocompromised patients with cancer. We report a case of liver abscess causing Candida tropicalis candidemia in an immunocompromised patient with pancreatic head cancer on 68Ga-FAPI PET/CT. A 77-year-old man had a history of 10-year duration of uncontrolled diabetes, the presence of neutropenia, immunocompromised condition, and the progression of pancreatic cancer despite the 14 cycles of chemotherapy and palliative radiotherapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: F-Florbetaben amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) scan is crucial for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease, typically involving a 20 min acquisition. However, maintaining such prolonged scans can be challenging in some cases. This study explores the diagnostic impact and feasibility of reducing scan durations by comparing quantitative measures between shortened and standard scans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Cerebral ischemia causes poor blood flow and increases reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can be targeted by drug delivery systems to improve treatment outcomes and reduce side effects.
- The study developed ROS-responsive chitosan-bilirubin (ChiBil) nanoparticles with atorvastatin to target stroke lesions in rats, comparing their effects to control treatments over a week.
- Results showed that the ChiBil-Statin group significantly improved motor skills, reduced brain cell damage, and decreased harmful inflammation levels, indicating their potential as an effective therapy for ischemic stroke.
Background: Endovascular therapy (EVT) is the treatment of choice for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) with large vessel occlusion. However, in many patients, successful EVT recanalization does not correspond to a clinical improvement, called futile recanalization (FR). We aimed to identify stroke risk factors and patient characteristics associated with FR in AIS with large core infarct (LCI).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHemorrhagic transformation is a serious complication of ischemic stroke, which occurs at a rate of between 18% and 42%. 68 Ga-FAPI PET can visualize acute cerebral infarction at risk of hemorrhagic transformation in the brain. We report a case of 68 Ga-FAPI PET imaging in a patient with recurrent ischemic stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- A multi-center MRI study investigated how white matter hyperintensity (WMH) affects recovery after stroke, focusing on different severity levels of ischemic stroke.
- Higher WMH levels were linked to worse outcomes three months later, but the impact varied based on initial stroke severity: mild strokes showed a dose-dependent effect while moderate-to-severe strokes had a threshold effect.
- The study found that WMH impacted 3-month recovery more significantly in those with mild strokes, suggesting that increased WMH burden worsens recovery, but its effect is less pronounced in more severe strokes.
Article Synopsis
- The report offers updated statistics on stroke patients in South Korea from a nationwide registry, revealing a male-to-female ratio of 1.5, with average ages of 67 for men and 73 for women.
- Hypertension is the leading risk factor (67%), with notable rates of diabetes (35%) and smoking (21%), while atrial fibrillation is less common (19%) than in Western populations, indicating effective preventive measures.
- There has been a decline in intravenous thrombolysis use, unchanged timing for treatment, and despite favorable outcomes at 3 months, there is a pressing need for improvements in acute stroke care.
Article Synopsis
- - The study investigates the effectiveness of noninvasive focused magnetothermal brain stimulation (Nano-MS) using magnetic nanoparticles on improving motor recovery and brain activity after a stroke in rats.
- - Rats were divided into different groups, and the Nano-MS group showed better motor function and brain metabolism compared to control groups, with reduced neuroinflammation and improved neuronal health.
- - The findings suggest that Nano-MS could be a promising new therapy for stroke rehabilitation, enhancing recovery by targeting brain excitability and other recovery processes, although further research is needed.
Article Synopsis
- Novel oral anticoagulants (NOACs) are recommended for stroke prevention in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and atrial fibrillation (AF), but their real-world effectiveness is unclear.
- This study analyzed data from nearly 13,000 patients over eight years to examine trends in clinical outcomes related to AIS and AF, particularly looking at how NOAC prescriptions influenced these trends.
- Results showed that NOAC prescriptions rose significantly from 0% to 75.6%, correlating with a decrease in 1-year incidences of major adverse outcomes from 28.3% to 21.7%, suggesting NOACs may play a key role in improving patient outcomes.
Background: There is limited information on the delivery of acute stroke therapies and secondary preventive measures and clinical outcomes over time in young adults with acute ischemic stroke. This study investigated whether advances in these treatments improved outcomes in this population.
Methods: Using a prospective multicenter stroke registry in Korea, young adults (aged 18-50 years) with acute ischemic stroke hospitalized between 2008 and 2019 were identified.
Background It is unclear whether statin treatment could reduce the risk of early vascular events when baseline low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels are already low, at <70 mg/dL, at the time of the index stroke. Methods and Results This study was an analysis of a prospective, multicenter, nationwide registry of consecutive patients with first-ever acute ischemic stroke with baseline low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels <70 mg/dL and without statin pretreatment. An inverse probabilities of treatment weights method was applied to control for imbalances in baseline characteristics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study examines the complex relationship between low LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) levels and early vascular outcomes in acute ischemic stroke patients, noting that lower LDL-C levels might lead to worse outcomes at first glance.
- Researchers analyzed over 32,500 patients and found a U-shaped relationship between LDL-C levels and three-month outcomes, with the highest events occurring in those with low LDL-C, but this trend wasn’t significant after adjustments were made.
- The findings suggest that statin pretreatment may mitigate the negative effects associated with low LDL-C levels, indicating the need for further research on this paradoxical relationship.
Introduction: The D-dimer to fibrinogen ratio (DFR) is a good indicator of clot-producing activity in thrombotic disease, but its clinical usefulness in stroke patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) has not been studied. We evaluated the association between the DFR and early neurological deterioration (END) in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients with NVAF.
Methods: We included consecutive AIS patients with NVAF between 2013 and 2015 from the registry of a real-world prospective cohort from 11 large centers in South Korea.
Article Synopsis
- Recent research indicates a lack of interchangeability between modified Rankin Scale measures of functional outcomes and mortality measures in assessing hospital performance for acute ischemic stroke patients.
- The study evaluated 8292 hospitalized stroke patients and used various metrics like 1-month and 1-year mortality to assess hospital outcomes.
- Findings revealed no significant correlation between hospitals’ rankings based on functional outcomes and those based on mortality rates, suggesting that these measures evaluate different aspects of hospital performance.
Article Synopsis
- Female patients experience greater disability and worse long-term outcomes after ischemic strokes compared to male patients, with distinct clinical manifestations and infarct locations influencing these disparities.
- A study involving 6,464 patients in South Korea utilized MRI and various statistical methods to assess differences in stroke severity and neurological outcomes based on sex.
- Results indicated that while the infarct volumes were similar, female patients had higher stroke severity scores, more neurological deterioration, and distinct lesion patterns, suggesting biological factors may play a role in sex differences related to stroke recovery.
Article Synopsis
- * It will involve 4,806 participants in a multicenter, randomized, open-label trial, comparing the outcomes of 12 months of DAPT versus 3 months followed by monotherapy for the next 9 months.
- * The primary outcome measures include the occurrence of strokes, heart attacks, and overall mortality over one year, while major bleeding events will be monitored as the primary safety concern.
Magnetic heat-based brain stimulation of specific lesions could promote the restoration of impaired motor function caused by chronic stroke. We delivered localized stimulation by nanoparticle-mediated heat generation within the targeted brain area via focused magnetic stimulation. The middle cerebral artery occlusion model was prepared, and functional recovery in the chronic-phase stroke rat model was demonstrated by the therapeutic application of focused magnetic stimulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeep learning-based personalised outcome prediction after acute ischaemic stroke.
J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry
May 2023
Background: Whether deep learning models using clinical data and brain imaging can predict the long-term risk of major adverse cerebro/cardiovascular events (MACE) after acute ischaemic stroke (AIS) at the individual level has not yet been studied.
Methods: A total of 8590 patients with AIS admitted within 5 days of symptom onset were enrolled. The primary outcome was the occurrence of MACEs (a composite of stroke, acute myocardial infarction or death) over 12 months.
Admission hyperglycemia, stroke subtypes, outcomes in acute ischemic stroke.
Diabetes Res Clin Pract
February 2023
Aims: Whether admission hyperglycemia is differentially associated with early vascular outcomes in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) depending on stroke subtype has been incompletely delineated.
Methods: In a multicenter, prospective stroke registry, patients with AIS were categorized based on admission glucose levels into normoglycemia, moderate hyperglycemia, and severe hyperglycemia (<140mg/dl, 140-179mg/dl, and ≥180mg/dl, respectively) groups. Multivariate analysis assessed the interaction between the hyperglycemia and ischemic stroke subtypes of large artery atherothrombosis (LAA), cardioembolism (CE), and small vessel occlusion (SVO) and early vascular outcomes (3-month stroke, all-cause mortality, and composite of stroke, MI, and all-cause mortality).
There is insufficient evidence on the effect of nanoparticles, particularly liposomes loaded with a statin, on acute ischemic stroke. We investigated the impact of atorvastatin-loaded PEG (polyethylene glycol) conjugated liposomes (LipoStatin) on the outcomes in rats with cerebral ischemia-reperfusion. PEGylated liposome loaded with atorvastatin was developed as a nanoparticle to specifically accumulate in an ischemic region and release the drug to ameliorate the harmful effects of the stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo investigate the clinical, laboratory, and radiological features of meningitis after lumbar epidural steroid injection (M-ESI) without accompanying spinal infection, data of patients with meningitis admitted between January 2014 and December 2021 in a single center were retrospectively reviewed. Among them, patients with a recent history of lumbar ESI were identified, and their medical records were collected. Patients with concomitant infections other than meningitis, including spinal epidural abscess, were excluded.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study investigated the prevalence of 15 genetic variants associated with stroke in a large, unselected cohort of young patients, highlighting that heritability might not be low among this demographic.
- Out of 1,033 patients, 12.7% were found to have clinically relevant genetic variants, predominantly in the RNF213, ABCC6, and NOTCH3 genes, with variation in frequency based on stroke subtype and age group.
- Notably, most patients with these variants did not exhibit typical neuroimaging features of the related disorders, indicating the need for further research on the clinical significance of these genetic findings.
Article Synopsis
- A study analyzed data from over 14,000 ischemic stroke patients to investigate early neurologic deterioration (END) due to stroke progression or recurrence, finding that 11.6% of patients experienced this complication.
- Among those with END, active management was applied to 64.2% of patients, using various strategies like volume expansion and changes in medication to address the issue.
- Patients receiving active management showed significantly better outcomes, with increased rates of functional independence and reduced disability three months post-stroke compared to those who did not receive active management.
Comparison of Factors Associated With Direct Versus Transferred-in Admission to Government-Designated Regional Centers Between Acute Ischemic Stroke and Myocardial Infarction in Korea.
J Korean Med Sci
October 2022
Article Synopsis
- A study compared factors influencing direct admissions to regional cardiocerebrovascular centers for patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI), revealing notable differences.
- Among the 26,824 patients analyzed, 66.6% with AIS and 48.2% with AMI were directly admitted, with variations in influencing factors such as previous health conditions and education level.
- Emergency medical service (EMS) usage emerged as the most significant factor for both conditions, indicating the need for better public education on symptoms and EMS utilization for timely hospital admissions.