Discussion:
With the ongoing Outbreak of COVID-19, we noticed a significant increase
in ischemic stroke incidence among patients with a severe inflammatory
response to the SARS-COV-2-induced ARDS admitted to our high dependency
and intensive care units [table1] . The authors observed
SARS-COV-2’s associated ischemic stroke with the ongoing recognition of
the neurological manifestations of COVID-19. [4,5,16] Mao
et al. described these manifestations in a retrospective, observational
case series of 219 patients in Wuhan, China, 41.1% of which had severe
pulmonary disease, 36.4% elicited a neurological manifestation of which
5.7% attributed to the cerebrovascular disease.[16]
In a retrospective cohort study of a 1,916 patient who visited the
emergency department in two academic New York hospitals, Mekler et al.
found that 36 patients had an acute ischemic stroke in SARS-COV2
infection (1.6%; 95% CI, 1.1%-2.3%) in comparison to 3 out of 1,486
patients with influenza viral infections (0.2%; 95% CI, 0.0%-0.6%).