Stroke risk, phenotypes, and death in COVID-19

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the hypothesis that strokes occurring in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have distinctive features, we investigated stroke risk, clinical phenotypes, and outcomes in this population. METHODS: We performed a systematic search resulting in 10 studies reporting stroke frequency among patients with COVID-19, which were pooled with 1 unpublished series from Canada. We applied random-effects meta-analyses to estimate the proportion of stroke among COVID-19. We performed an additional systematic search for cases series of stroke in patients with COVID-19 (n = 125), and we pooled these data with 35 unpublished cases from Canada, the United States, and Iran. We analyzed clinical characteristics and in-hospital mortality stratified into age groups (<50, 50-70, >70 years). We applied cluster analyses to identify specific clinical phenotypes and their relationship with death. RESULTS: = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Stroke is relatively frequent among patients with COVID-19 and has devastating consequences across all ages. The interplay of older age, comorbid conditions, and severity of COVID-19 respiratory symptoms is associated with an extremely elevated mortality.