Abstract
The epidemiology of silent brain infarction: a systematic review of population-based cohorts
Highlights
Cerebral infarction is a commonly observed radiological finding in the absence of corresponding, clinical symptomatology, the so-called silent brain infarction (SBI)
According to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, relevant papers were identified by means of electronic searches of abstracts published in English in the Medline and EMBASE databases between 1946 to December 2013 using advanced search functions and the search terms: ‘silent brain infarcts’, ‘silent cerebral infarcts’, ‘silent stroke’ and ‘silent lacunar infarcts’; these were combined with the terms: ‘epidemiology’, ‘incidence’, ‘prevalence’ or ‘risk factors’ [see Additional file 1: Table S1: Detailed Search Strategies]
Incidence and prevalence of SBI Studies on the incidence and prevalence of SBI in population-based cohorts have primarily been conducted in two settings: representative community samples (CS) and participants undergoing routine health screening (RHS)
Summary
Cerebral infarction is a commonly observed radiological finding in the absence of corresponding, clinical symptomatology, the so-called silent brain infarction (SBI). Almost 50 years ago, Fisher [1] first described the presence of cerebral infarction in the absence of any clinically apparent stroke or transient ischemic attack It is only in recent years with major advances in imaging technology, that ‘silent’ brain infarcts (SBI) have been studied in any detail. These lesions are not benign, as originally thought, and associations with subtle neurological deficits [2,3], cognitive dysfunction [4,5,6], psychiatric disorders [2,7,8,9], clinically apparent stroke [10,11,12,13] and early mortality [4,10] have led to suggestions that the term ‘silent’ be replaced by ‘covert’ [14]. Of the epidemiological literature available on SBI, the most credible and generalizable data come from large population-based cohort studies (for example, community samples and routine health screens)
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