Stroke risk, phenotypes, and death in COVID-19: systematic review and newly reported cases

Objectives: To investigate the hypothesis that strokes occurring in patients with 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search resulting in 10 studies reporting stroke frequency among COVID-19 patients, which were pooled with one unpublished series from Canada.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additional systematic search for cases series of stroke in COVID-19 patients (n=125) and we pooled these data with 35 unpublished cases from Canada, USA, and Iran.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: The proportion of COVID-19 patients with stroke (1.8%, 95%CI 0.9-3.7%) and in-hospital mortality (34.4%, 95%CI 27.2-...