Study Population

We assembled a retrospective cohort of patients with cerebral edema admitted to Barnes-Jewish Hospital between 2006 and 2015 with diagnosis codes of “Cerebral Edema” and “Ischemic Stroke” from the Clinical Investigation Data Exploration Repository (CIDER) maintained by Washington University's Center for Biomedical Informatics.⁷ This was limited to: patients over age 18 with confirmed acute anterior circulation stroke and NIHSS ≥ 8 who received at least one head CT within 24 hours of last-known normal. (Figure 1) The Washington University Human Studies Committee approved the study.

Eligibility Criteria: Abbreviations: IPH=Intraparenchymal Hemorrhage; SAH= Subarachnoid Hemorrhage; SDH= Subdural Hemorrhage; PLME= Potentially Lethal Malignant Edema. *Death due to cerebral edema is defined as midline shift ≥ 5mm at the level of the septum pellucidum on any scan during admission. § Inadequate charting of either outcome or missing values for final model variables.