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. 2022 Jul 22;11:19. doi: 10.12703/r/11-19

Figure 1. The continuum of acute cerebrovascular syndromes.

Figure 1.

The incorporation of both clinical aspects (i.e., specific syndrome and duration of symptoms) and the imaging status (i.e., imaging evidence of tissue injury or not) underscores the importance of considering transient ischemic attack (TIA) as part of a continuum rather than a discrete and separate entity from cerebral infarction. It also allows an overall understanding that is comparable to the one widely used for the coronary circulation. In this context, ischemic strokes due to large arterial occlusion (LAO) would be comparable to ST-segment elevation myocardial infarctions (STEMIs), while smaller infarctions would be more analogous to non-STEMIs (NSTEMIs). On another dimension, the presence or absence of a neurologic deficit may or may not be associated with evidence of tissue injury and, depending on the location and volume of the compromised brain tissue, may or may not result in a disabling outcome. See text for further description. DWI, diffusion-weighted imaging; FLAIR, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery; SAO, small arterial occlusion; UA, unstable angina.