Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology (Aug 2019)

Microbleed prevalence and burden in anticoagulant‐associated intracerebral bleed

  • Vasileios‐Arsenios Lioutas,
  • Nitin Goyal,
  • Aristeidis H. Katsanos,
  • Christos Krogias,
  • Ramin Zand,
  • Vijay K. Sharma,
  • Panayiotis Varelas,
  • Konark Malhotra,
  • Maurizio Paciaroni,
  • Aboubakar Sharaf,
  • Jason Chang,
  • Odysseas Kargiotis,
  • Abhi Pandhi,
  • Christoph Schroeder,
  • Argyrios Tsantes,
  • Efstathios Boviatsis,
  • Chandan Mehta,
  • Panayiotis D. Mitsias,
  • Magdy H. Selim,
  • Andrei V. Alexandrov,
  • Georgios Tsivgoulis

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/acn3.50834
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 8
pp. 1546 – 1551

Abstract

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Abstract Prior studies suggest an association between Vitamin K antagonists (VKA) and cerebral microbleeds (CMBs); less is known about nonvitamin K oral anticoagulants (NOACs). In this observational study we describe CMB profiles in a multicenter cohort of 89 anticoagulation‐related intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) patients. CMB prevalence was 51% (52% in VKA‐ICH, 48% in NOAC‐ICH). NOAC‐ICH patients had lower median CMB count [2(IQR:1–3) vs. 7(4–11); P < 0.001]; ≥5 CMBs were less prevalent in NOAC‐ICH (4% vs. 31%, P = 0.006). This inverse association between NOAC exposure and high CMB count persisted in multivariable logistic regression models adjusting for potential confounders (OR 0.10, 95%CI: 0.01–0.83; P = 0.034).