Statin therapy in acute cardioembolic stroke with no guidance-based indication

Objective It is uncertain if patients with cardioembolic stroke and absence of a guidance-based indication for statin therapy should be administered a statin for prevention of subsequent vascular events. This study was performed to determine whether the statin therapy is beneficial to prevent major vascular events in this population.

Methods Using a prospective multicenter stroke registry database, we identified acute cardioembolic stroke patients who were hospitalized between 2008 and 2015. Patients who had other established indications for statin therapy according to current guideline were excluded. Major vascular event was defined as a composite of stroke recurrence, myocardial infarction and vascular death. We performed frailty model analysis with the robust sandwich variance estimator using the stabilized inverse probability of treatment weighting method to estimate hazard ratios of statin therapy on outcomes.

Results Of 6,124 cardioembolic stroke patients, 2,888 (male, 44.6%...