The primary aim of the study is to derive and validate risk scores for vascular endpoints (recurrent stroke, myocardial infarction, and other complications of stroke) and for death following an incident stroke. For this purpose patients with an incident stroke will be followed for 36 months with additional assessments at 12, 24 and 36 months.

Risk of vascular disease including stroke, myocardial infarction, and vascular death is high after stroke but there are only few prognostic models for long term risk up to 3 years. About 850 patients with an incident stroke will be followed for 3 years with assessments at baseline and at 3, 12, 24, and 36 months. Factors that have already been reported to be significant predictors of vascular diseases in previous studies as well as new biomarkers (e.g. neuroimaging, blood based biomarkers) identified in this cohort will be considered. The improvement of discrimination including these new variables in the models will be investigated. Several measures of improving predictive properties (e.g. calibration, discrimination, net reclassification) will be used to compare predictive models with different complexity. The model will be validated using the bootstrap method (internal validation) and an independent external sample in cooperation with the Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research, Munich.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age ≥18 years
• Language: German
• First ever stroke including ischemic stroke, primary intracranial hemorrhage and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis that occurred with stroke onset in the last 7 days
• Written informed consent by patient prior to study participation
• Willingness to participate in follow-up

Exclusion Criteria:

• Prior stroke (definition according to WHO definition)
• Patients presenting brain tumour or brain metastasis
• Participation in an intervention- / AMG-study

Patients admitted to a specialized stroke service because of an acute stroke