Background: The second prevalent cause of death globally is cerebrovascular stroke. It's responsible for a great extent of disabilities than any other condition. A large share of this disability is related to poststroke neurocognitive impairment.
Objective: to assess neuroimaging indices related to cognitive dysfunction in a sample of Egyptian stroke patients.
Patients & methods: This study included 70 patients diagnosed with ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke after 3 months from the onset. Cognitive functions were assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test (MoCA).
Results: This study included 70 stroke patients. They comprised 29 men and 41 women with an age of 52.9 ± 10.4 years. According to MoCA score, cognitive impairment was detected in 22 patients (31.4 %) while the remainder 48 patients had normal cognitive function. Patients with cognitive impairment are significantly older (59.6 ± 6.2 versus 4 9.9 ± 10.6 years; p < 0.001) and have significantly higher frequency of atherosclerotic disease (64 % versus 36 %, p < 0.001). It was found that patients with cognitive impairment show significantly higher frequency of left hemisphere strokes (68 % versus 42 %; p=0.039), both cortical and deep strokes (59 % versus 18 % and 23 %; p=0.042). It was also demonstrated that patients with cognitive impairment had significantly larger stroke lesions when compared with patients with normal cognition (12.8 ± 1.9 versus 3.9 ± 0.9 cm; p < 0.001).
Conclusions: Cognitive impairment is prevalent in stroke patients. Risk factors included older age, left hemispheres strokes, cortical strokes and larger stroke lesions.