Data relating to stroke patients at a department of internal medicine (50 beds) in a county teaching hospital were studied in period 1990-1994. In this five-year period, 1184 patients were admitted because of some forms of stroke. The mortality due to the stroke was 16.8% (199 patients, deceased group). Autopsy was performed on 159 of these 199 patients (autopsy rate: 79.8%). Age- and sex-matched controls were selected from the survivors (n = 159). The main risk factors of stroke were analyzed in both groups: hypertension, cardiac events (decompensation, atrial fibrillation, and old myocardial infarction), previously verified diabetes, and recurrent stroke in the history. The mean hospital nursing time for the survivors was 12.3 +/- 6.3 days, while that in the deceased 7.2 +/- 7.6 days.
Results: 1. Hypertension was present to similar extents in both groups (survivors: 82.1%, deceased group: 77.8%) 2. Decompensation occurred in 5% vs 18.2% fibrillation in 11.3% vs 13.8%, and old myocardial infarction in 5.6% vs 18.2% 3. Diabetes was observed in 21.3% vs 36.4% and 4. Recurrent stroke in 22.6% vs 39.6%. These risk factors strongly predicted the outcome of the stroke. Other recently observed factors (haemorrhagic form, conscious state, time of hospital admission, seasonal variation, higher erythrocyte sedimentation rate, hyperglycaemia, proteinuria, early deep vein trombosis) revealed also significant differences between survivors and deceased patients. Since pulmonary thromboembolism was twice as frequent in the deceased patients as in the survivors, early heparin prevention is necessary immediately after computer tomography which excluded the haemorrhagic type of cerebrovascular diseases.