Impact of process of care in the short-term mortality in non-severe intracerebral hemorrhage in southern Portugal.

Introduction: Patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (SICH) face the worse functional and vital prognosis among all stroke subtypes. In cases of severe SICH, therapeutic inertia or nihilism complicates meaningful identification of outcome predictors. Therefore, we sought to investigate clinic-radiological and process of care predictors of short-term mortality in patients with mild to moderate SICH.

Patients And Methods: Observational retrospective community representative consecutive case series of patients from Algarve, southern Portugal. Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of short-term (30-day) death.

Results: Mortality was 23.9% (111/464). Most important predictors of death were unconsciousness at admission (OR = 12.392, 95% CI = 3.816-40.241, p < 0.001), hospital arrival ≥ 6 h after stroke onset (OR = 2.842, 95% CI = 1.380-5.852, p =.005), hematoma volume > 30 cc/cm3 (OR = 3.295, 95% CI 0 1.561-6.953, p =.002), intraventricular extension (OR = 2.885, 95% CI = 1.457-5.712, p =.002) and ≥ 24 h in the Emergency Department (OR = 19.675, 95% CI = 3.682-34.125, p =.009). Stroke Unit (SU) admission reduced the likelihood of death (OR = 0.293, 95% CI = 0.137-0.682, p =.002).

Conclusion: The observed mortality is high. Apart from the traditional clinic-radiological factors, in mild to moderate SICH, process of care related factors have strong impact on mortality. These results highlight the need of continuous improvement of SICH care to improve the prognosis.