Stroke Alert December 2022 Stroke Alert

On Episode 23 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the December 2022 issue of Stroke: “Direct, Indirect, and Combined Extracranial-to-Intracranial Bypass for Adult Moyamoya Disease” and “Contemporary Incidence and Burden of Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis in Children of the United States.” She also interviews Drs. Koji Tanaka and Andrew Demchuk about article “Significance of Baseline Ischemic Core Volume on Stroke Outcome After EVT in Patients Age ≥75 Years.”
Dr. Negar Asdaghi:         Let's start with some questions.
1) Is direct bypass better than indirect bypass in preventing the future risk of vascular events in adult patients with moyamoya disease?
2) What is the contemporary incidence of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis in the pediatric population?
3) And finally, is endovascular therapy beneficial for patients presenting with a large ischemic core?
We have the answers and much more in today's podcast. You're listening to the Stroke Alert Podcast, and this is the best in Stroke. Stay with us.
Welcome back to another issue of the Stroke Alert Podcast. My name is Negar Asdaghi. I'm an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and your host for the monthly Stroke Alert Podcast. In our final podcast for the year, I'm thrilled to announce that Drs. Nastajjia Krementz and Eric Goldstein have joined our podcast as assistant editors to help us cover the latest and the best in the field of cerebrovascular disorder. And together, here's our article selection to close the year.
As part of our Advances in Stroke, in the article titled "Focus on Anticoagulation for Valvular Heart Disease With and Without Atrial Fibrillation," we get an update on current evidence from randomized controlled trials on the use of direct oral anticoagulants or vitamin K antagonists in patients with valvular heart disease that are mechanical valves, moderate to severe mitral stenosis, or bioprosthetic valves from the perspective of stroke physicians.
What that means is that data from randomized trials was analyzed based on whether the patient had a prior history of stroke or TIA. In this review, we learned that direct oral anticoagulants may be used in patients with bioprosthetic valves who have atrial fibrillation, although DOACs have never been shown to be superior over vitamin K antagonists. We also learned that vitamin K antagonists should be used in patients with rheumatic moderate to severe mitral valve stenosis or patients with mechanical valves with or without atrial fibrillation and, of course, sometimes during the first few months after either surgical or transcatheter aortic valve replacement in patients without atrial fibrillation. And finally, patients with bioprosthetic valves without AFib don't have any other indications to be treated with anticoagulants should be treated with antiplatelet monotherapy in the long run.
In a separate article in this issue of the journal, from Dr. Yang and colleagues from China, we learn about the pathophysiology of radiation-induced brain injury with special attention to radiation-induced vasculopathy. These investigators show that hyperactivity of notch signaling pathway that in normal state is essential in vascular morphogenesis and maintenance of arterial identity actually results in abnormal accumulation and disturbance of vascular smooth muscle cells, resulting in arterial muscularization and arterial dysfunction seen in radiation-induced vasculopathy. What's interesting is that inhibition of the notch signaling pathway in their study resulted not only in a measurable reduction in radiation induced vasculopathy, but also an overall improvement in radiation-induced brain injury as measured by the cognitive function of the mice exposed to radiation in their study. This study takes us a step closer to possible therapeutic options for radiation-induced vasculopathy and radiation-induced b