Presentation and Selection of Patients

Abstract

The clinical manifestations of ischemia of the brain caused by disease of its supplying arteries are traditionally classified as transient (TIAs) or permanent (stroke) neurologic deficits. Conventionally, a deficit lasting less than 24 hours is called a TIA and one lasting longer than that is called a stroke. For a while it was popular to insert a third category between these two known by its acronym, RIND, a reversible ischemic neurologic deficit. To qualify as a RIND, such a deficit was arbitrarily said to be present for longer than 24 hours but less than 3 weeks. The sequestration of deficits into this third clinical category has no discernible practical use or specific pathologic correlation. Most of the so-called RINDs have been shown by modern imaging techniques to be strokes. Therefore the use of RIND as a category in clinical description is no longer justified.