Stroke steals 2 years of healthy life
Reported December 11, 2010
Complications shortly after a stroke deprive patients of about two years of healthy life, according to new research.
In a study of more than 1,200 patients suffering from ischemic stroke, the researchers gauged the impact of stroke and its complications using disability-adjusted life years (DALY) measures of age, gender and disability level.
The study revealed that patients suffering any of a range of complications lost an average of 5.21 DALY, a difference of 2.1 healthy life years.
Patients with one complication lost 1.52 additional DALY on average, while patients with two or more complications lost 2.69 DALY.
This study delineates the burden of post-stroke complications with a more comparable and more understandable scale healthy life years lost, said Keun-Sik Hong, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study and associate professor at Inje University in South Korea.
The study appeared in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.