by
Amanda Doreson, Project Manager | January 29, 2007
"Many patients who come to hospitals with a suspected stroke ultimately have a different diagnosis. Most possible stroke victims are first evaluated by non-specialists, who may be reluctant to treat a patient for stroke without greater confidence in the accuracy of the diagnosis. Our results show that MRI is twice as accurate in distinguishing stroke from non-stroke," said Steven Warach, M.D., Ph.D., director of the NINDS Stroke Diagnostics and Therapeutic Section and senior investigator of the study. "Based on these results, MRI should become the preferred imaging technique for diagnosing patients with acute stroke."
The study included 356 consecutive patients with suspected stroke arriving at the NIH Stroke Center at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, MD, a primary stroke center that is designed to stabilize and treat acute stroke patients. Stroke specialists conducted emergency clinical assessments with all patients, including the NIH Stroke Scale which is used to measure stroke severity. MRI was done prior to CT in 304 patients. Scans were initiated within two hours of each other, with a median difference of 34 minutes. Patients were excluded from the analysis if either CT or MRI was not done. The images were sorted randomly and independently by two neuroradiologists and two stroke neurologists.
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Results of the study show standard MRI is superior to standard CT in detecting acute stroke and particularly acute ischemic stroke. The four readers were unanimous in their agreement on the presence or absence of acute stroke in 80 percent of patients using MRI compared to 58 percent using non-contrast CT. No significant difference using the two technologies was seen in the diagnosis of acute intracranial hemorrhage, which is consistent with previous findings.
"Although MRI is remarkably accurate in detecting early stroke damage, it can't substitute for a doctor's clinical judgment in making a stroke diagnosis and deciding upon treatment," said Dr. Koroshetz. "Future studies are needed to determine whether advanced contrast enhanced CT techniques can afford the same level of clinical information more quickly and with less expense," he added.
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