Predictive Strength of Risk Factors of Stroke

The objective is to identify the risk factors for Stroke and to estimate their relative importance in a large nationally representative sample of 277 patients randomly selected public sector hospitals of Rawalpindi that we checked through modeling that which factors can contribute more significantly as compared to others in developing Stroke in this nationally representative sample. A hospital based case- control study of 277 patients with 78% cases (163 Ischemic and 52 Hemorrhagic) and 22% controls are carried out during the six months period of February 2008 to July 2008. Data is collected from Military Hospital Rawalpindi (MH) and Rawalpindi General Hospital (RGH) through well-designed and structured questionnaire. Data is classified and analyzed as socio-demographic and clinical risk factors. The analysis is descriptive as well as analytical. Multiple Logistic Regression Model and Probability of predicted risk of disease were used to get the degree of association between risk factors and Stroke. Odds Ratio (OR) and 95% Confidence Intervals (CI) are computed. The study shows that the incidence of stroke is due to three socio-demographic risk factors age (OR=1.045, p=0.000), home environment (OR=1.870, p=0.048) and living style (OR=1.731, p=0.003) and six clinical risk factors Hypertension (OR=59.570, p=0.000), Diabetes Mellitus (OR=5.163, p=0.001), Cholesterol Level (OR=12.113, p=0.000), Smoking (OR=5.137, p=0.002), Heart Diseases (OR=11.660, p=0.000) and Central Nervous System Infections (OR=7.580, p=0.009).The study concludes that Hypertension, Cholesterol Level and Heart Diseases are found to be the strongest significant risk factors in both genders to develop Stroke. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]