Progressing Stroke: Towards an Internationally Agreed Definition

Background: The study of early neurological deterioration (progression) in acute stroke has been hampered by a lack of standardisation in the terminology or assessment procedures. An international panel was therefore convened, to agree on robust operational definitions for future studies and to validate them in an observational study involving 10 centres from the European Stroke Database Collaboration. Methods: Standardised neurological assessments were performed daily for the first 3 days on patients with acute stroke, consecutively admitted within 24 h of onset, using the Scandinavian Stroke Scale (SSS) scoring system. An early deterioration episode (EDE) was defined as a ≧2 SSS-point worsening in either conscious level, arm, leg or eye movement scores, and/or a ≧3 SSS-point worsening in speech score, between consecutive neurological assessments. Stroke progression (SP) was defined as a similar neurological worsening comparing the day 3 assessment with the baseline assessment, or death occurring within 72 h of onset. The ability of SP to predict poor outcome (death or a Barthel ADL score