Abstract:Objective To develop and validate a predictive model for assessing the risk of increased intracranial pressure in patients experiencing the acute phase of massive cerebral infarction.Methods We retrospectively analyzed clinical data from 102 patients with massive cerebral infarction treated in the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University between January 2019 and September 2021. Patients were classified into an intracranial hypertension group (63 cases) and a non-intracranial hypertension group (39 cases) according to the presence of intracranial hypertension. Clinical data of the two groups of patients including age, sex, medical history, neurological function scores, and treatment, were respectively analyzed. The risk factors for increased intracranial pressure were identified using multivariable Logistic regression analysis, based on which a predictive model was established. The performance of the predictive model was evaluated via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis and validated through 1 000 bootstrap resamples.Results Compared with the non-intracranial hypertension group, the age was greater, the body temperature, PaO2, PaCO2 and GCS scores were lower, the heart rate, the proportion of patients with hypertension, the proportion of patients with infarct area ≥ 2 cm2, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, ICP, NIHSS scores, RASS scores, incidence of vomiting, incidence of brain edema, and the rate of electroencephalograph frequency slowing were higher, and the delay to admission was longer in the intracranial hypertension group. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in terms of the sex composition, body mass index, presence of coronary heart disease, presence of diabetes mellitus, the level of consciousness, pupil abnormalities, intracranial infection, anticoagulant use, and thrombolytic therapy (P >0.05). The results of multivariable Logistic regression analysis showed that higher PaCO2 [O^R = 0.792 (95% CI: 0.673, 0.933) ], ICP [O^R = 1.061 (95% CI: 1.026, 1.097) ], and NIHSS scores [O^R = 1.231 (95% CI: 1.073, 1.413) ], presence of vomiting [O^R =6.220 (95% CI: 1.086, 36.639) ] and cerebral edema [O^R = 39.888 (95% CI: 4.865, 327.05) ], and longer delays to admission [O^R = 6.517 (95% CI: 1.661, 25.574) ] were all risk factors for increased intracranial pressure (P < 0.05). The ROC curve analysis revealed that the area under the curve of the predictive model was 0.989 (95% CI: 0.976, 1.000), with a Jordan index of 0.911, a sensitivity of 93.7% (95% CI: 0.845, 0.935), and a specificity of 97.4% (95% CI: 0.917, 1.000), indicative of good discriminative ability of the model. Both the calibration curve and the self-validation using the Bootstrap method demonstrated that the model had good predictive accuracy and consistency.Conclusions The predictive model effectively forecasts the risk of increased intracranial pressure in patients during the acute phase of massive cerebral infarction. By allowing clinicians to early identify high-risk patients, this tool facilitates timely interventions that can potentially improve patient outcomes.