Role of 24-Hr Blood Pressure Variability as a Target Therapeutic Risk Factor for Poor Functional Outcome of Acute Ischemic Stroke

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The present study aims to evaluate the role of blood pressure variability (BPV) as a target therapeutic risk factor for poor outcome of ischemic stroke by finding the association between the two and by finding the population attributable risk (PAR) of BPV compared to other baseline outcome predictors. METHODS: A prospective observational study was carried out at GMCH, Nagpur, India from January to June 2019 in 75 patients diagnosed with acute ischemic stroke. BP was recorded hourly for the first 24 hours of admission and base line factors were collected along with measurement of stroke severity. BPV was measured by index of average real-time variability (ARV) while discharge outcome was measured by Barthel Index. RESULTS: 36.5% of patients had poor outcome at discharge. A significant association was found between 24-hr ARV of systolic BP and poor outcome (P = 0.002, 95% CI = 2.22-23.5). Five factors were found to be independent outcome predictors on multiple logistic regression (OR, 95% CI): age (1.07, 1.03–1.10), NIHSS score (1.12, 1.04–1.27), on admission SBP (5.12, 4.01–16.23), on admission RBS (2.23, 1.92–6.49) and 24 Hr ARV-SBP (9.65, 3.02–20.1). The PAR of 24 hr ARV-SBP was 23.6%, second only to NIHSS score (26.4%). CONCLUSIONS: Reduction in BP variability might have a beneficial impact on the outcome of patients with acute ischemic stroke. There is further scope to explore optimum therapeutic strategies to minimize BPV in the management of acute ischemic stroke.