The slice score: A novel scale measuring intraventricular hemorrhage severity and predicting poor outcome following intracerebral hemorrhage.

Objectives: To quantify extent of intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) following intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) with a novel, simple IVH severity score, and to explore and compare its performance in predicting worse outcomes.

Patients And Methods: A new scoring system for IVH severity was proposed and termed Slice score. The Slice score features non-septum pellucidum section, internal capsule section, third ventricle occipital horn section, three standardized scans for scoring the lateral ventricles. 652 scans from 326 subjects were retrospectively analyzed. The correlations between measured IVH volume and Slice score, original Graeb, LeRoux, and IVH score (IVHS) were compared. The association between these scores and clinical outcomes were evaluated using logistic regression. We then identified clinical thresholds of Slice score by balancing the probability of prediction and accuracy. Primary outcome was defined as 90-day poor outcome (modified Rankin Scale score ≥ 4) and secondary outcome was 90-day mortality.

Results: Of 326 ICH patients, 122 (37.4%) had poor outcome and 59 (18.1%) died at 3 months. The Slice score showed the highest correlation with measured IVH volume (R = 0.73, R = 0.54, p < 0.001). The observed area under the curve were similar among the Slice, original Graeb, LeRoux score, and IVH score for poor outcome (0.633, 0.633, 0.632, 0.634, respectively), and for mortality (0.660, 0.660, 0.660, 0.656, respectively). All IVH scales were independently associated with 90-day poor outcome and mortality with close odds ratio in adjusted models (all odds ratio > 1.07, all p < 0.05). Multivariable Analyses of categorized Slice score revealed optimal thresholds of 6 and 12 for primary and secondary outcomes (odds ratio 4.20, 95% confidence interval 1.82-10.02, p = 0.001; odds ratio 5.41, 95% confidence interval 1.66-17.43, p = 0.005, respectively).

Conclusions: The Slice score correlated highly with the IVH volume, was a reliable volumetric scale for measuring IVH severity, and could be an easy-to-use tool for predicting 90-day poor outcome and mortality in ICH.