Cerebrovascular disease in a tertiary care hospital. The current situation and points to be improved

Caring for patients suffering from a cerebrovascular diseases requires a large quantity of resources which must be optimised. The aim of this study is to analyse the management of stroke in a tertiary care hospital. All admissions with a diagnosis of stroke were analysed retrospectively for the year 2003. Length of stay, computed tomography in the Emergency Room, origin, previous admissions during the last year, presence of vascular risk factors, stroke subtype, complications and mortality during admission and destination when discharged from hospital, were all recorded. 936 patients were admitted to hospital with a diagnosis of stroke. 80.22% corresponded to acute ischaemic strokes (27.14% lacunar, 18.57% transient ischaemic attacks, 10.25% cardioembolic, 15.44% aterothrombotic, 8.44% infarct of undetermined cause, 0.24% unusual aetiology) and 19.78% corresponded to haemorrhagic strokes (13.99% intraparenchymatous hemorrhage, 5.79% subarachnoid hemorrhage). Intra-hospital mortality was 5.3%. 11% suffered from complications while in hospital, and average length of stay was 10.4 days, being much longer for those patients discharged to a medium-long stay centre (17.5 days). Compared to other series, the incidence of cardioembolic and aterothrombotic subtypes of stroke is low. However, because of the inclusion of neurosurgical patients, an increase of cerebral haemorrhages is observed. Intra-hospital morbidity and mortality and average length of stay in our series are consistent with those from other centres of similar characteristics. A better coordination with medium-long stay centres along with the presence of neurologists on call, would certainly improve these variables.