Objectives: To determine the prevalence of stroke risk factors in a general practice population and to identify pharmacotherapies currently used in management of stroke risk factors.
Design: Multicentre, observational study by 321 randomly selected general practitioners who each collected data on 50 consecutive patients attending their surgery.
Patients and setting: 16 148 patients aged 30 years or older attending general practices across Australia during 2000.
Outcome measures: Prevalence of hypertension, current smoking, diabetes, hypercholesterolaemia, atrial fibrillation, recent history of stroke or TIA; extent of pharmacotherapy use in risk-factor management.
Results: 70% of patients had one or more risk factors and 34% had two or more. Hypertension was the risk factor with greatest prevalence (44%), followed by hypercholesterolaemia (43%) and current smoking (17%). The prevalence of risk factors generally increased with age, except for current smoking, where a decrease with age was seen. The most common pharmacotherapies were cardiovascular agents, followed by antiplatelet agents. Two-thirds of patients with hypertension were taking cardiovascular drugs, most commonly angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors.
Conclusions: Stroke risk factors are highly prevalent in general practice patients and GPs are ideally placed for opportunistic case-finding. There is considerable scope for improving management of stroke risk factors. The Avoid Stroke as Soon as Possible (ASAP) general practice stroke audit provides a baseline against which progress in risk-factor management can be measured.