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Introduction: The best therapeutic strategy for patients with mechanical heart valves (MHVs) having acute ischemic stroke during treatment with vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) remain unclear. Being so, we compared the outcomes for: (i) full dose heparin along with VKA (bridging therapy group) and (ii) restarting VKA without heparin (nonbridging group)., Patients and Methods: For this multicenter observational cohort study, data on consecutive acute ischemic stroke patients with MHV was retrospectively collected from prospective registries. Propensity score matching (PSM) was adopted to adjust for any treatment allocation confounders. The primary outcome was the composite of stroke, systemic embolism, symptomatic cerebral bleeding, and major extracerebral bleeding at 90 days., Results: Overall, 255 out of 603 patients (41.3%) received bridging therapy: 36 (14.1%) had combined outcome, compared with 28 (8.0%) in the nonbridging group (adjusted OR 1.83; 95% CI 1.05-3.18; p  = 0.03). Within the bridging group, 13 patients (5.1%) compared to 12 (3.4%) in the nonbridging group had an ischemic outcome (adjusted OR 1.71; 95% CI 0.84-3.47; p  = 0.2); major bleedings were recorded in 23 (9.0%) in the bridging group and 16 (4.6%) in the nonbridging group (adjusted OR 1.88; 95% CI 0.95-3.73; p  = 0.07). After PSM, 36 (14.2%) of the 254 bridging patients had combined outcome, compared with 23 (9.1%) of 254 patients in the nonbridging group (OR 1.66; 95% CI 0.95-2.85; p  = 0.07)., Conclusion: Acute ischemic stroke patients with MHV undergoing bridging therapy had a marginally higher risk of ischemic or hemorrhagic events, compared to nonbridging patients., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Paciaroni received honoraria as a member of the speaker bureau of Sanofi-Aventis, Bristol Meyer Squibb, Daiiki Sankyo and Pfizer. Becattini received honoraria as a member of the speaker bureau of Bristol Meyer Squibb and Bayer. Michel received research grant by Swiss National Science Foundation, Swiss Heart Foundation and University of Lausanne. Tsivgoulis has received funding for travel or speaker’s honoraria from Bayer, Pfizer, and Boehringer Ingelheim. He has served on scientific advisory boards for Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Daiichi Sankyo. Toni has received personal fees from Abbott, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Daiichi Sankyo, Medtronic, and Pfizer. Caso received honoraria as a member of the speaker bureau of Boehringer Ingelheim, Bayer, and Daiichi Sankyo (all fees were paid to Associazione Ricerca Stroke, Umbria). She received honoraria as consultant or advisory board member of Boehringer Ingelheim, Bayer, Daiichi Sankyo, and Pfizer. Ntaios reports speaker fees/advisory board/ research support from Bayer, Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim and Elpen. All fees are paid to his institution. Sacco has received personal fees as speaker or advisor from Abbott, Allergan, Astra Zeneca, Eli Lilly, Lundbeck, Novartis, NovoNordisk, Teva and research grants from Allergan, Novartis, and Uriach. Vanacker received honoraria as a member of the speaker bureau and as advisory board of Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Meyer Squibb, Daiichi Sankyo, Medtronic, EG and Pfizer. Del Sette has received honoraria for speaking from Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim. Zedde received speaking and consulting fees from Daiichi Sankyo, Amicus Therapeutics, Sanofi Genzyme, Abbott, and Takeda. Cappellari has received consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer – Bristol Meyer Squibb, and Daiichi Sankyo. Flomin has received personal fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, Bayer and Takeda, grants, personal fees and nonfinancial support from Pfizer, personal fees and nonfinancial support from Sanofi Genzyme. Ornello has received nonfinancial support from Novartis, Allergan, and Teva. Giannopoulos has received funding for travel from Bayer and speaker’s honoraria from Pfizer. Zini has received consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, CSL Behing and Alexion, Astra Zeneca. The other authors report no conflicts.

Introduction: Migraine with aura (MA) accounts for up to 10% of "stroke mimics" and can present cerebral perfusion abnormalities. We aimed to compare perfusion-CT (PCT) findings in acute-onset MA mimicking an ischemic stroke with those observed in transient ischemic attack (TIA)., Methods: We retrospectively studied patients admitted to our hospital between 2002 and 2014 with suspicion of acute ischemic stroke, having PCT and receiving a final diagnosis of MA. We visually assessed PCT for the presence and extent of focal hypoperfusion (FHP). MA patients with FHP were compared with consecutive TIA patients showing FHP. We performed both qualitative and quantitative analysis of PCT., Results: Of 47 patients with MA (median age = 33 years, 55% females), 16 (34%) displayed FHP. Compared to MA patients without FHP, MA patients with FHP had similar headaches and aura features, but a less frequent history of MA ( p  = 0.010). Compared to 74 TIA patients with FHP (median age = 69 years, 43% females), MA patients with FHP showed hypoperfusion that more frequently involved adjacent vascular territories or a whole hemisphere ( p  < 0.001). In addition, hypoperfusion in MA patients had a less pronounced increase in rMTT (1.2 vs 1.8, p  < 0.001) and rTTP (1.1 vs 1.2, p  < 0.001), and a lesser decrease in rCBF (0.8 vs 0.6, p  < 0.001) compared to hypoperfusion in TIA. rMTT displayed the best discriminative ability to differentiate MA from TIA., Conclusion: Focal perfusion abnormalities in acute MA often involve adjacent vascular territories and hypoperfusion is less pronounced than in TIA. MA can be best differentiated from TIA by a smaller rMTT increase., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: D. Strambo: Research grants from the Swiss Heart Foundation and the University of Lausanne (not related to this work). V. Dunet: Research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (not related to this work). P. Michel: Research grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation and Swiss Heart Foundation; consulting fees from Medtronic (all used for research and education). The other authors declare no conflict of interest., (© European Stroke Organisation 2022.)