RedUcing risk of stroke and demeNtia in patients with COVert cERebrovascular disease: a pilot and development study (UNCOVER)

After a brain scan, many people without any symptoms of a stroke learn they have scan appearances similar to those of a stroke (‘covert cerebrovascular disease’). People with covert cerebrovascular disease have a higher risk of future stroke or dementia, but no treatments are known to reduce this risk. In part, this is because it is difficult to find and ask enough people with covert cerebrovascular disease to take part in trials of new treatments. 

We have developed new computer methods that can look at massive numbers of brain scan reports. We think these new computer methods could find and invite a large number of people affected by covert cerebrovascular disease to studies to test new treatments. We will test whether this approach is feasible in this project and in later work test if it is acceptable to people with Covert cerebrovascular disease (CCD).
If this method is feasible and acceptable, our future work will use brain scans collected in normal clinical practice and invite people to join a study of an existing blood pressure treatment in NHS Lothian.