Frequency and predictors of proxy-confirmed post-stroke cognitive complaints in lacunar stroke patients without major depression
International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 01/07/2011  Clinical Article

Xiong YY et al. – Many lacunar stroke patients complained of cognitive decline after stroke. This study aims to investigate the factors underlying post-stroke cognitive complaints in these patients. This study suggests that post-stroke cognitive complaints are frequent among lacunar stroke patients without major depression and are prominently determined by the subclinical depressive symptomatology.

• 75 consecutive lacunar stroke patients without major depression were recruited for study
• Stroke severity measured using NIHSS score and MRI performed during acute admission period
• At 3 months, objective psychometric performance and depressive symptoms assessed
• Post-stroke cognitive complaints corroborated by proxy
• Using logistic regression examined contribution of demographic features, stroke severity, objective psychometric scores, depressive symptoms, and imaging features (white matter lesion volume and infarct measures) to post-stroke cognitive complaints

• Thirty-two (42.7%) patients had post-stroke cognitive complaints
• Patients with post-stroke cognitive complaints had more depressive symptoms and worse psychometric performance than those without
• In multivariate logistic regression model, only severity of depressive symptoms independently associated with post-stroke cognitive complaints