Funding Agency:

National Institute of Health

Total Project Period:

4/1/04 - 3/31/10

Total Project Award:

$2,273,652

Principal Investigator:

Michael Horowitz, MD

Co-Investigators:

Marie Baldissers, Yue-Fang Chang, John Gorcscan, Marilyn Hravnik, Amin Kassam, Arlan Mintz, Jeffrey Yao

Project Summary:

A subset of patients within the first five days following aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) have elevated troponin I levels indicative of myocardial ischemia and infarct. However, the true incidence of myocardial ischemia in this population is unknown in that ischemic episodes are shortlived, undetected, or deadly.

This application will prospectively evaluate the incidence of myocardial ischemia and infarct in the SAH population and determine whether, the presence of myocardial ischemia significantly increases the risk of symptomatic vasospasm (SV), a major complication following SAH. The central hypothesis of this application is that a catecholamine surge [norepinephrine (NE) epinephrine (EPI) immediately after SAH provides a common mechanism associated with both vasospasm of the myocardial and cerebral vessels that increases the risk for secondary myocardial and cerebral ischemia and infarct