Funding Agency:

NIH National Heart and Lung Institute (RO1 Grant No. HL074316)

Total Project Period:

4/01/2004 - 3/31/2008

Total Project Award:

$2,134,857

Principal Investigator:

Amin Kassam, MD

Co-Investigators:

Mary Kerr, Marie Baldisseri, Yue-Fang Chang, John Gorcscan, Michael Horowitz, MD, Arlan Mintz, MD

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.