Functional outcome prediction following intracerebral hemorrhage

The ICH score is a validated method of assessing the risk of mortality and morbidity after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). We sought to compare the ability of the ICH score to predict outcome assessed with three of the most widely used scales: the Barthel Index (BI), modified Rankin Scale (mRS), and Glasgow Outcome Score (GOS). All patients with ICH treated at our institution between February 2009 and March 2011 were followed-up at three months using the mRS, GOS, and BI. The ICH score was highly correlated with the three-month mRS (ρ=0.59, p<0.001), BI (ρ=-0.57, p<0.001) and GOS (ρ=0.61, p<0.001). The ICH score also predicted dependency for each measure well, with areas under the curve falling between 0.826 and 0.833. Our results suggest that future clinical studies that use the ICH score to stratify patients may employ any of the three outcome scales and expect good discrimination of disability.