Years of optimum health lost due to complications after acute ischemic stroke: disability-adjusted life-years analysis.
OBJECTIVE
Complications after stroke increase disability or death. The disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) metric, developed by the World Health Organization to measure the global burden of disease, integrates both mortality and disability. Widely used in population-level data analyses, it has not been applied to individual patient-level data captured in outcome registries.


METHODS
We analyzed patient-level data from the outcome registry of 1254 consecutive patients with acute ischemic stroke enrolled between September 1, 2004, and August 31, 2005, in South Korea. For each subject, we calculated DALY lost due to the qualifying stroke and then analyzed additional DALY lost due to complications after stroke.


RESULTS
For 1233 patients with available 3-month outcomes, the average DALY lost due to the index stroke was 3.82 (95% CI, 3.68 to 3.96). Any complications, neurological complications, and medical complications occurred in 34.0%, 20.8%, and 24.0%, respectively. The additional DALYs lost associated with any, neurological, and medical complications were 2.11 (95% CI, 1.78 to 2.44), 2.15 (95% CI, 1.72 to 2.59), and 1.99 (95% CI, 1.59 to 2.40), respectively. Patients with 1 complication had 1.52 (95% CI, 1.15 to 1.89) additional DALY lost, and those with >or=2 complications had 2.69 (95% CI, 2.18 to 3.20) additional DALY lost.


CONCLUSIONS
Early poststroke complications deprive patients of approximately 2 years of optimum health. Greater numbers of complications are associated with greater loss of healthy life-years. DALY analysis quantifies the burden of poststroke complications with a uniform metric potentially useful for health system planners.
Hong
Keun-Sik
KS
Department of Neurology, Clinical Research Center, Ilsan Paik Hospital, Inje University, Goyang, Korea.
Saver
Jeffrey L
JL
Kang
Dong-Wha
DW
Bae
Hee-Joon
HJ
Yu
Kyung-Ho
KH
Koo
Jaseong
J
Han
Moon-Ku
MK
Cho
Yong-Jin
YJ
Park
Jong-Moo
JM
Lee
Byung-Chul
BC
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002545:Brain Ischemia / Q000150:complications / Q000453:epidemiology*; D017281:Cost of Illness; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011446:Prospective Studies; D019057:Quality-Adjusted Life Years; D012008:Recurrence; D056910:Republic of Korea / Q000453:epidemiology; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications / Q000453:epidemiology*; D013997:Time Factors