Background: The long-term prognostic significance of incidental asymptomatic intracerebral hemorrhages (aICHs) detected on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is unknown.
Methods: We analyzed clinical and baseline MRI data from the cohort of 5888 study participants aged 65 years and older recruited in the Cardiovascular Health Study from 4 US communities. We identified participants who had aICHs on MRI and selected 3 age- and gender-matched controls without aICHs. We compared the rates of cardiovascular events using logistic regression analysis including incident myocardial infarction, stroke, and death between those with and without aICHs.
Results: A total of 23 participants had aICHs classified as acute (n = 3), subacute (n = 4), and chronic (n = 16). During 14 years of follow-up, the risk of incident stroke (relative risk [RR], .6; 95% confidence interval [CI], .2-2.0), myocardial infarction (RR, .3; 95% CI, .06-1.4), and death (RR, .6; 95% CI, .2-1.7) was not different between participants with aICHs compared with controls (n = 69). There was no difference between the 2 groups with regard to time to ischemic stroke or time to death by Kaplan-Meier analysis.
Conclusions: The risks of stroke, myocardial infarction, and death were similar between persons with aICHs detected on MRI compared with age- and gender-matched controls.
Keywords: Intracerebral hemorrhage; asymptomatic; cardiovascular events; epidemiologic study; stroke.
Copyright © 2015 National Stroke Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.