LAUSR

Intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) is responsible for disproportionately high morbidity and mortality rates. The most used ICH classification system is based on the anatomical site. We used SMASH-U, an aetiological based classification system for ICH by predefined criteria: structural vascular lesions (S), medication (M), amyloid angiopathy (A), systemic disease (S), hypertension (H), or undetermined (U). We aimed to correlate SMASH-U classification of our patients to the intra-hospital mortality rates. We performed a single centre retrospective study at the Santa Maria Della Misericordia Hospital, Perugia (Italy) including consecutive patients between January 2009 and July 2017 assigned with 431 ICD-9 (International Classification of Diseases-9). We classified the included patients using SMASH-U criteria, and we analysed the association between SMASH-U aetiology and ICH risk factors to the outcome defined as intra-hospital mortality, using multivariable logistic regression analysis. The higher intra-hospital mortality rate was detected in the systemic disease (36.1%), medication (31.5%), and undetermined (29.4%) groups. At multivariable analysis, medication and systemic disease groups resulted associated with the outcome (odds ratio 3.47; 95% CI 1.15–10.46; P  = 0.02 and 3.64; 95% CI 1.47–9.01; P  = 0.005, respectively). Furthermore, age and high NIHSS at admission resulted significantly associated with intra-hospital mortality (odds ratio 1.01; 95% CI 1–1.03; P  = 0.04 and 1.12; 95% CI 1.03–1.22; P  = 0.008, respectively). In our retrospective study, the aetiology-oriented classification system SMASH-U showed to be potentially predictive of intra-hospital mortality of acute haemorrhagic stroke patients and it may support clinicians in the acute ICH management.