Age differences in clinical characteristics, health care, and outcomes after ischemic stroke in China.
OBJECTIVE
Little information is available on the effects of age on health care and outcomes of ischemic stroke (IS) in China. Our aim was to evaluated risk factors, health care, and outcomes among age groups including ≤ 45, 46-65, 66-79, and ≥ 80 years and to find whether the outcome was affected by age and health care.


METHODS
CNSR is a nationwide prospective registry for patients admitted with acute stroke and prospectively followed up 12-month outcomes. Demographics, socioeconomics, risk factors, health care, and outcomes were analyzed among age groups, and multivariate regression analysis was used to determine the association of outcome and age and health care.


RESULTS
We identified 12,415 acute IS patients for analysis. Of 1179 (9.50%) were aged ≥ 80 years. In terms of risk factors, cardiac diseases were significantly more frequent in patients ≥ 80 years, behavioral risk factors were more common in younger patients, and hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes were more seen in 46-79 patients. The use of health care varied among groups and was significantly lower in ≥ 80 years especially in secondary prevention. The very old patients had the worst outcomes even after adjusting by prognostic factors; however, adjusting forward by health care, the extent of differences decreased.


CONCLUSIONS
In CNSR, differences in stroke clinic characteristics and health care were observed among various age groups, and the old patients, receiving lower levels of stroke care, had the worst outcomes. Knowledge of the age differences in ischemic stroke may be helpful to appropriately allocate the limited health resources and to improve stroke outcomes.
Department of Pediatrics, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
Ya-Xian
YX
Deng
Yi-Long
YL
Wang
Bao-Qin
BQ
Gao
Chun-Xue
CX
Wang
Xing-Quan
XQ
Zhao
Li-Ping
LP
Liu
An-Xin
AX
Wang
Yong
Y
Zhou
Gai-Fen
GF
Liu
Wan-Liang
WL
Du
Ning
N
Zhang
Jing
J
Jing
Xia
X
Meng
Jie
J
Xu
Lin-Yu
LY
Wang
Yong-Jun
YJ
Wang
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging; D002545:Brain Ischemia / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D002681:China; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D012042:Registries; D012307:Risk Factors; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D020521:Stroke / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology; D055815:Young Adult