We investigated whether baseline comorbidities & vascular risk factors affect the functional outcome of patients with acute basilar artery occlusion (aBAO).

aBAO is rare and accounts for 1% of all strokes presenting with a wide range of symptoms and carrying high mortality and morbidity, despite recent advances in treatment.

This is a descriptive, retrospective single center database. We reviewed patients presenting with aBAO or with symptomatic high grade stenosis in basilar artery at University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH) between January 1, 2007 and June 31, 2017. Data was extracted from UNMH Cerner database and collected on secured Redcap™ database. Patients with missing data were excluded. All included patients were dichotomized into two groups based on 1-3 months post-stroke modified Rankin Scale (mRS). Patients with mRS 0-2 were grouped as good outcome and patients with mRS 3-6 as poor outcome.

A total of 66 patients were identified. Only 57 patients were included. Total 15 patients (26.3%) had good outcome (mRS 0-2) and 42 (73.7%) had poor outcome (mRS 3-6). The mean age was 64 and 66 years respectively. Overall aBAO was more common in males (73.3% and 76.2% respectively). The common baseline comorbidities present in both groups were as follows: Hypertension in 60% and 57%, Diabetes in 26.7% and 21.4%, Hypercholesterolemia in 33% in both groups, previous history of ischemic stroke in 6.6% and 23.8%, previous history of TIA in 6.6% and 7.1% respectively. History of smoking was present in 13.3% in good outcome group and in 9.5% in poor outcome group.

Our study did not find any correlation between baseline vascular risk factors and comorbidities with functional outcome in patients with aBAO. Other variables such as the infarct location, site of stenosis/occlusion or baseline neurological presentation need to be explored in a large sample to analyze correlation with functional outcome.