Prognosis after cerebral venous thrombosis: Mortality during initial admission and at 30 days and one year after discharge in a large Canadian population-based cohort

Background: Prognosis following cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) is more favorable than other stroke types, but longer-term literature is limited, and trends over time are under-explored.

Objective: Using administrative data, we examined factors associated with mortality in the inpatient setting, at 30 days and at one year following hospital discharge among a large consecutive cohort of Canadian patients with CVT.

Design/methods: CVT patients from British Columbia (BC), Canada from 2000 to 2017 were identified using ICD diagnosis codes from the BC subset of the Canadian Institute for Health Information's Discharge Abstract Database. Logistic regression was used to investigate factors associated with inpatient mortality and survival analysis with Cox regression was used to explore factors associated with mortality at 30 days and one year.

Results: Of 554 incident CVT patients identified, 508 (92 %) survived their index admission. Older age (OR 1.04, 95 % CI 1.03-1.06, p < 0.01) and the presence of seizures (OR 2.31, 95 % CI 1.08-4.94, p = 0.03) or intracranial bleeding (OR 2.28, 95 % CI 1.08-4.85, p = 0.03) were associated with increased odds of inpatient mortality. Mortality after hospital discharge was 3.0 % at 30 days and 9.4 % at one year. Older age (HR 1.05, 95 % CI 1.02-1.08, p < 0.01 at 30 days; HR 1.05, 95 % CI 1.04-1.07, p < 0.01 at 1 year) and having recent or active malignancy (HR 4.17, 95 % CI 1.51-11.52, p < 0.01 at 30 days; HR 4.60, 95 % CI 2.60-8.11, p < 0.01 at 1 year) were significantly associated with higher risks of mortality at 30 days and one year after discharge. There were decreases in inpatient mortality over the study period, but this was offset by higher mortality within 30 days after discharge in the later study epochs.

Conclusions: Among patients discharged with a diagnosis of CVT, one-year mortality was high at 9.4 %. Older age and a history of cancer were associated with higher mortality after discharge.