Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 22|pp 22390—22398

High incidence of stroke in COVID-19 patients

Jingyu Chen^1,², Yazhou Wu³, Zhi Chen², Bin Yi^1,⁴, Lili Zhang^1,⁵, Changlin Yin^1,⁶, Hua Feng²

¹Department of Intensive Care Unit, Taikangtongji Hospital (Wuhan), Wuhan 430040, People’s Republic of China
²Department of Neurosurgery, Southwest Hospital, Army Medical University (Third Military Medical University), Chongqing 400038, People’s Republic of China
³Department of Health Statistics, College of Preventive Medicine, Army Medical University (Third Military Medical University), Chongqing 400038, People’s Republic of China
⁴Department of Anesthesia, Southwest Hospital, Army Medical University (Third Military Medical University), Chongqing 400038, People’s Republic of China
⁵Neurology Department, Daping Hospital, Army Medical University, Chongqing 400038, People’s Republic of China
⁶Department of Intensive Care Unit, Southwest Hospital, Army Medical University (Third Military Medical University), Chongqing 400038, People’s Republic of China

* Co-first authors

Received: May 16, 2020Accepted: August 22, 2020Published: November 20, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Chen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

A retrospective analysis of 11 COVID-19 patients complicated with stroke was performed. It was found that the incidence of stroke in patients with COVID-19 was significantly higher than the average level of the general population (P=0.003), and the D-dimer levels of 11 stroke patients were significantly higher than other patients (P=0.004). The significant increase of D-dimer can be used as an early warning indicator of cerebral infarction. It is critical to have a response plan for treating acute stroke in COVID-19 patients.