Correlation between asymmetrical vein sign of SWI and long-term clinical outcomes in patients with middle cerebral artery ischemic stroke.

Objective: To evaluate the association of asymmetrical cortical vein sign (ACVS) and asymmetrical medullary vein sign (AMVS) on susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) with 90-day poor outcomes in patients with unilateral middle cerebral artery acute ischemic stroke (AIS) after conservative drug treatment.

Methods: Clinical data for the participants included age, sex, smoking, alcohol, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, coronary heart disease, NHISS-admission, and NHISS-discharge scores. Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) within 12 h of hospital admission, including conventional scan sequences and a SWI sequence. Poor prognosis was defined as a modified Rankin scale (mRS) ≥ 3 at 90 days.

Results: A total of 108 patients were included from January 2021 to March 2022. Twenty-seven (25%) patients had a poor outcome at 90 days. Univariate analysis indicated that diabetes, NHISS-admission, NHISS-discharge, DWI-ASPECTS, SWI-ASPECTS, FLAIR-ASPECTS, and AMVS + were associated with 90-day poor outcome. Multivariate regression analysis showed that AMVS + was associated with 90-day poor outcome from the three models (OR = 3.57, P = 0.006; OR = 3.74, P = 0.005; OR = 5.14, P = 0.0057). However, no significant association was found between ACVS + and 90-day poor outcome.

Conclusions: AMVS might be a helpful neuroimaging predictor for poor outcome at 90 days compared to ACVS in drug-conserving treatment of patients with unilateral middle cerebral artery ischemic stroke.