Different effect of hyperglycemia on stroke outcome in non-diabetic and diabetic patients--a cohort study.

Objectives: Relationship between hyperglycemia and stroke outcome is unclear, partly due to the small sample size in most studies, and partly due to lack of consensus concerning the cutoff level for hyperglycemia.

Methods: In a cohort study, we investigated whether on-admission hyperglycemia is an independent predictor for 30-day case fatality by analyzing data of 2496 consecutive computed tomography (CT) verified acute ischemic stroke patients (2077 non-diabetic and 419 diabetic) included in the prospective, hospital-based Debrecen Stroke Database. Instead of using an arbitrary cutoff level for hyperglycemia, quartiles of on-admission glucose level were used for Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox proportional hazard modeling.