Stroke patients treated at Department of Neurology, Sibenik-Knin County General Hospital, 1996-2005.

In this retrospective study, data on 3819 stroke patients, 1966 (51.5%) female and 1853 (48.5%) male, treated at Department of Neurology, Sibenik-Knin County General Hospital during the 1996-2005 period were analyzed. There were 3417 (89.5%) patients with ischemic stroke and 402 (10.5%) patients with hemorrhagic stroke. Analysis according to age decades revealed the 70-79 age group to account for the greatest number of both ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke patients per year. Stroke risk was found to rise significantly with each age decade irrespective of sex (chi2=7764.19; P=0.0000001). Rural and urban population accounted for 56.9% and 43.1% of all stroke cases, respectively (P=0.0000001). During the study period, the number of stroke cases steadily increased from 313 in 1996 to 422 in 2005 per 112,891 county population, yielding a rise in stroke incidence over years (chi2=24.63; P=0.003). The mean age of stroke patients increased from 72.5 years in 1996 to 74.6 years in 2005. The mean age of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke patients was 73.2 and 66.7 years, respectively (P=0.0000). The stroke mortality rate increased from 75.2/100,000 in 1996 to 87.7/100,000 in 2000, and then decreased to 66.4/100,000 in 2005. The rate of hospital stroke mortality was reduced from 27.07% (95% CI, 21.62-33.47%) in 1996 to 17.44% (95% CI, 13.72-21.86%) in 2005 (P=0.005159), yielding a hospital mortality decrease by 9.63%. During the four-year study period, 808 patients died from stroke, showing a female predominance (F:M, 59.8% vs. 40.2%; P=0.000003092).