Ischemic stroke in patients that recover from COVID-19: Comparisons to historical stroke prior to COVID-19 or stroke in patients with active COVID-19 infection.

Background And Purpose: Understanding the relationship of COVID-19 to stroke is important. We compare characteristics of pre-pandemic historical stroke (Pre-C), cases in acute COVID infection (Active-C) and in patients who have recovered from COVID-19 infection (Post-C).

Methods: We interrogated the Qatar stroke database for all stroke admissions between Jan 2019 and Feb 2020 (Pre-C) to Active-C (Feb2020-Feb2021) and Post-C to determine how COVID-19 affected ischemic stroke sub-types, clinical course, and outcomes prior to, during and post-pandemic peak.