Stroke and Women

• Main Authors: Gülçin Benbir, Birsen İnce
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Turkish Society of Cerebrovascular Diseases 2013-12-01
• Series: Türk Beyin Damar Hastalıkları Dergisi
• Subjects: Stroke; ischemic stroke; gender; women; risk factors
• Online Access: http://www.journalagent.com/tbdhd/pdfs/TBDHD-03522-RESEARCH_ARTICLE-BENBIR.pdf

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate the differences in vascular risk factor and etiology of stroke in two sexes. METHODS: We reviewed the medical files of 2798 patients being followed-up in our Stroke Clinic between the years 1996-2011. The stroke subtypes and risk factors were recorded on the basis of clinical data, physical and neurological examinations, and neuroimaging findings. Data were collected in SPSS 11.5 system and Pearson chi-square and Mann-Whitney U tests were used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Of a total of 2798 patients, 2564 patients (91,6%) had ischemic stroke, and 234 of them (8,4%) had hemorrhagic stroke. The mean follow-up duration was 50.2+42.7 months. Of whole study population, 1289 patients were women (46%), 1509 of them were men (54%). The analysis of stroke subtypes showed that the most common subtype was stroke of unknown etiology in both sexes. Following this, the most common subtype was atherothrombotic stroke in men, and cardioembolic stroke in women. Coronary heart disease was more common in men, while atrial fibrillation and other rhythm anomalies were more common in women. Smoking and alcohol consumption were more common in men. CONCLUSION: Our study showed that there are major differences in stroke subtypes and vascular risk factors. Better knowledge of these differences, as well as influencing factors, is of crucial value – in addition to the need of hormonal changes, pregnancy and depression to be better identified in women – for both primary and secondary prevention.