Prediction of recurrent stroke and vascular death in patients with transient ischemic attack or nondisabling stroke: a prospective comparison of validated prognostic scores.

Background And Purpose: Several predictive scores have been developed and validated for stratifying cerebrovascular patients based on the risk of future (cerebro)vascular events. We aimed to prospectively compare the predictive accuracy of the Essen Stroke Risk Score, Stroke Prognostic Instrument, Hankey score, and the Life Long After Cerebral ischemia score.

Methods: Between August 2005 and December 2006, we included 2381 patients from 10 German stroke centers with an acute nondisabling ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack and with prospective assessment of clinical variables for calculation of the predictive scores. A total of 1897 patients (79.7%) could be followed up for a median of 1 year. To evaluate the performance of each model, we calculated the area under the curve by receiver operating characteristic. In addition, we used the recommended cutoff values for calculation of sensitivity and specificity for stroke or the combined outcome of stroke or cardiovascular death.

Results: The Kaplan-Meier estimate for the overall annual stroke risk was 4.8% and for recurrent stroke or cardiovascular death 6.6%. We could confirm the predictive value of all 4 previously developed scores with a marginally superior performance of the SPI-II.

Conclusions: In patients with acute nondisabling ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack, all 4 scores are able to stratify the risk of recurrent stroke or the combined outcome. Simple point scores (Essen Stroke Risk Score, Stroke Prognostic Instrument) may help to raise awareness for medical prevention in clinical routine and increase compliance with risk factor modification.