Table 1.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Domain	Inclusion	Exclusion
Study type	Comparative observational studies	Case reports
	Prospective observational studies	Selected case series
	Cohort studies	Literature review
	Unselected case series	Conference proceedings
		Full text unavailable
Participants	Human	Non-human subjects
	Adults	Exclusively paediatric patients Mixed paediatric and adult populations (where paediatric and adult groups are not possible to identify separately)
	Patients with acute stroke—ischaemic (including patients with a transient ischaemic attack) or haemorrhagic	Patients with non-stroke conditions, such as sickle cell disease, arteriovenous malformation, traumatic brain injury, and cerebral tumour
	Patients with acute spontaneous subarachnoid haemorrhage
Setting	Any
Procedure	Transcranial ultrasonography (grey-scale/Doppler/colour-coded sonography) with/without contrast (microbubble) enhancement if the outcomes are reported separately	Transcranial ultrasonography (grey-scale/Doppler/colour-coded sonography) with contrast (microbubble) enhancement as sole ultrasound method, or if the outcomes are not reported separately
	A reference standard diagnostic tool, such as conventional imaging (CT, MRI), cerebral angiography (computed tomography angiography, magnetic resonance angiography, digital subtraction angiography)	No reference test employed
	Maximal time interval between the onset of symptoms and index and reference tests: 72 h	Unknown or more than 72 h’ time interval between the symptoms onset and index and/or reference tests
	Maximal time interval between the index and reference tests: 24 h	Unknown or more than 24 h’ time interval between the index and reference tests
Aims/outcomes	Detection of signs of acute cerebral ischaemia, acute intracranial haemorrhage, midline shift in space-occupying stroke as measured by both transcranial ultrasonography as index test and reference test	Detection of signs of vasospasm following subarachnoid haemorrhage