As of midnight on 30 November 2023, PRESTIGE-AF has officially closed recruitment to the PRESTIGE-AF clinical trial with a total of 319 participants.

After a lot of hard work from across the consortium and our clinical sites, the team managed to recruit 20 participants over the past month – the highest recruiting month since the project began – leading to the study having 5 more participants than the 314 estimated as part of our power calculations.

The hard work doesn’t stop here though as the team continues its patient follow up before analysing all our data. We look forward to the time when we can share our results and help resolve the uncertainty around how best to treat intracerebral haemorrhage patients with atrial fibrillation.

Resolving an area of clinical uncertainty

PRESTIGE-AF research has shown that clinicians view the process of deciding on stroke prevention in patients with AF post-ICH as “challenging” due to considerable “clinical equipoise”.

“Patients with ICH were largely excluded from seminal trials on the safety and efficacy of oral anticoagulants (OAC) in patients with AF, and much of the current evidence on the use of OAC and/or antiplatelets in patients with AF and ICH comes from observational studies,” said Elena Ivany, Research Associate at the University of Liverpool’s Centre for Cardiovascular Science. “These are major factors in the uncertainty of how to treat these patients, which PRESTIGE-AF is aiming to resolve.”

Stroke remains one of the largest public health challenges around the world, being the most common cause of adult-acquired disability, the second leading cause of death globally, and the second most frequent cause of dementia. In addition, its impact is expected to further increase in the coming decades due to the ageing population.

Improving our understanding of how to prevent stroke in all groups is vital to lessening this burden and saving lives.