Abstract

ADDRESSING THE IMPACT OF RISK FACTORS ON STROKE: A PROSPECTIVE OBSERVATIONAL STUDY IN TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL

Niranjana E.S., Parvathy R. Panicker, Kameswaran R.* and Shanmuga Sundaram R.

ABSTRACT

Background Stroke is a global health problem and is the second leading cause of adult disability and third leading cause of death. There are number of factors associated with the occurrence of stroke namely age, sex, hypertension, serum cholesterol, alcohol intake, smoking diabetes mellitus obesity, physical inactivity, family history of transient ischemic attack and other dietary factors. Better identification and proper management of these factors can results in better treatment outcome in such patients. Materials and Methods The prospective observational study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital, Erode, Tamil Nadu for a period of 6 months. The study consists of 150 hospitalised computerized tomography scan (CT Scan) proved cases of stroke. The patients with first incident of stroke were included in the study while the patients with known history of stroke, pregnant and lactating women were excluded. Results Out of 150 patients, 82 (64.66%) were males and 68 (45.33%) were females. It was found that HTN (49.33%) was the major risk factor followed by smoking (48%), and combination of all of these with alcohol (43.33%) and then DM (33.33%) Conclusion The study revealed that, hypertension, Smoking, Diabetes mellitus are the biggest risk factors for all type of stroke. Since these are modifiable factors better treatment outcome can be achieved by proper management of these risk factors.

Keywords: Stroke, CT scan, DM, HTN.