BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Recent data on the incidence, time trends, and predictors of recurrent ischemic stroke are limited for unselected patient populations. METHODS Data for ischemic stroke patients were obtained from The Swedish Stroke Register (Riksstroke) between 1998 and 2009 and merged with The Swedish National Inpatient Register. A reference group of patients was created by Statistics ...

BACKGROUND Previous studies examining social work interventions in stroke often lack information on content, methods and timing over different phases of care including acute hospital, rehabilitation and out-patient care. This limits our ability to evaluate the impact of social work in multidisciplinary stroke care. We aimed to quantify social-work-related support in stroke patients and their ca...

BACKGROUND The rate of stroke in atrial fibrillation (AF) depends on the presence of comorbid conditions and the use of antithrombotic therapy. Although adjusted-dose warfarin is superior to aspirin for reducing stroke in AF, the absolute risk reduction of warfarin depends on the stroke rate with aspirin. This prospective cohort study tested the predictive accuracy of 5 stroke risk stratificati...

Background and Purpose—Vital to maintaining an efficient delivery of services is an understanding of patient travel patterns during an acute ischemic stroke. Socioeconomic status may influence access to stroke care, including transportation and admission to different facility types. Methods—We analyzed all acute ischemic stroke admissions between 2003 and 2007 through the Discharge Abstract Dat...

Strokes can cause disability and death. The experienced causes post-stroke stress syndrome, which results in maladaptive coping strategies. Coping strategies is important because it affects the patient’s outcome recovery. purpose of this study was to determine factors that influence patients based on a literature study. Journals from several databases such as Google Scholar (n=8), ProQuest (n=5...

Eating and swallowing are activities that are normally performed without conscious thought. This complex behaviour – involving 5 pairs of cranial nerves and 26 pairs of muscles – can be interrupted by a stroke, leading to dysphagia. Dysphagia is associated with aspiration (where material passes into the respiratory tract) and aspiration carries a risk of pneumonia seven times greater than that ...

The risk of stroke in atrial fibrillation (AF) needs to be assessed in each patient to determine the clinical and cost-effectiveness of thromboprophylaxis, with the aim of appropriate use of antithrombotic therapy. To achieve this, stroke risk factors in AF populations need to be identified and stroke risk stratification models have been devised on the basis of these risk factors. In this artic...

BACKGROUND Emergency medical services (EMS) prenotification to hospitals regarding the arrival of patients who have had a stroke is recommended to facilitate the workup once the patient arrives. Most hospitals have the patient enter the emergency department (ED) before obtaining a head computed tomography (CT) scan. At Capital Health, prehospital stroke-alert patients are delivered directly to ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect on patient outcome of a teaching package for nurses designed to improve the positioning of stroke patients. DESIGN Cluster randomized controlled trial with six-month follow-up. SETTING Ten stroke rehabilitation hospital units located within one UK inner city region. These were randomized to control or intervention group. SUBJECTS A sample of 120 patients a...