Despite improvements in overall stroke survival, patients surviving an ischaemic stroke are at increased risk of cardiovascular complications, both in the acute and chronic phase, and one-third of deaths occurring after the incident event are cardiovascular [1,2]. Approximately 20 % of these patients newly develop heart failure, cardiac arrhythmia, or acute coronary syndrome within the first 30 days after stroke, a phenomenon termed the ‘stroke-heart syndrome’ [3,4]. Such patients with stroke-heart syndrome (SHS) are at highly increased risk of further long-term cardiovascular events [5,6].
