'Nine out of 10 strokes preventable,' claims study

Conclusion This valuable research aims to clarify which preventable risk factors are associated with stroke risk – knowledge that could have an effect on addressing this important global health problem. The study's strengths are that it is based on a large sample size of nearly 27,000 people from 32 countries and of different socioeconomic backgrounds. The researchers made careful attempts beforehand to calculate how many participants they would need to include to be able to reliably detect differences in risk factors. There was little missing data across the total sample – for the various different risk factors assessed, only 1% of questionnaires or assessments had missing data. However, the study has limitations. These include the potential for inaccuracies arising from the self-reported lifestyle and medical questionnaires. This is particularly a risk for people with stroke for whom the questionnaires were completed by a family member or friend. Also, certain risk factors, such as past heart attack or problems with heart valves, had to be pooled into one overall category of "heart factors", which makes it difficult to get a reliable indication of what this actually means. As the researchers also acknowledge, controls may not necessarily be representative of the general population, particularly if most were recruited from hospital departments. The level of recruitment in the community was unclear. The proportions of strokes that may be attributed to ...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Neurology Medication Source Type: news