Joan Montaner: Can Blood Test Identify Intracerebral Hemorrhage Within Minutes?
Joan Montaner, Head of Neurology Department at Virgen Macarena University Hospital, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Can a blood test help us distinguish intracerebral hemorrhage from ischemic stroke in the very first minutes of stroke care?
Delighted to be in Barcelona for WICH 2026 – World Intracranial Hemorrhage Conference, where I will discuss the rapidly evolving role of blood biomarkers in the ultra-early identification of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH).
The DETECT study has provided important evidence that GFAP can be measured rapidly at the point of care and may help identify ICH in the prehospital setting.
But GFAP alone may not be the end of the story.
In the K-POCT Seville Stroke Network, we are exploring whether combining complementary biological signals with clinical information can further improve stroke subtype classification.
Our updated cohort now includes 76 acute stroke patients: 50 ischemic strokes and 26 ICH.
GFAP alone
- Sensitivity 80.8% | Specificity 90.0%
GFAP plus NT-proBNP plus NIHSS
- Sensitivity 86.6% | Specificity 94.0%
- PPV 88.0% | NPV 92.2%
These are preliminary results requiring further prospective validation, but they support an exciting concept:
Different stroke mechanisms leave different biological fingerprints in blood.
The future may therefore not be a single ‘stroke biomarker’, but rather rapid multimarker signatures integrated with simple clinical information.
The aim is to bring useful diagnostic information closer to the patient and earlier in the stroke pathway – potentially supporting faster triage and more precise decisions before hospital arrival.
From ‘time is brain’ to ‘information is brain’.
Looking forward to discussing these results and learning from colleagues at WICH 2026 in Barcelona.”
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