Meehan E F, Sobel E, Alter M, Francis M E, McCoy R L, Levitt L P
Lehigh Valley Stroke Program, Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Am J Prev Med. 1986 Mar-Apr;2(2):97-102.
A communitywide, hospital-based stroke register has been established in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The Lehigh Valley has about 600,000 inhabitants and is geographically somewhat isolated. Ninety-five percent of the people are white, and the population has an age-sex distribution like that of the United States as a whole. All patients falling into any of nine diagnostic categories of stroke or transient ischemic attack are registered on admission to a hospital, and medical, social, and demographic data are abstracted onto precoded data forms. A single neurologist assigns definitive diagnoses according to standardized criteria after reviewing all of the medical data. The stroke register provides a new and powerful tool for collecting population-based data on a large number of cases in a short-time. After adjusting for demographic differences, epidemiologic studies can be carried out that may be generalizable to the entire United States. Several organizational aspects of the register and its operation are described in this report, and examples of the types of information and statistics readily calculable from the data in the register are given. The completeness of the stroke ascertainment and the large population registered also offer an excellent opportunity for any interested researcher to investigate the relationships between medical, social, and demographic conditions on the one hand and stroke risk on the other; to study the efficacy of prevention and treatment programs; and to determine health care provision requirements in a well-defined population.
宾夕法尼亚州和新泽西州的利哈伊谷建立了一个基于医院的全社区卒中登记处。利哈伊谷约有60万居民，在地理上有些孤立。95%的人口为白人，其年龄性别分布与美国总体情况相似。所有属于九种卒中或短暂性脑缺血发作诊断类别的患者在入院时进行登记，并将医疗、社会和人口数据摘要录入预先编码的数据表格。一名神经科医生在审查所有医疗数据后，根据标准化标准做出明确诊断。该卒中登记处为在短时间内收集大量基于人群的数据提供了一个新的有力工具。在调整人口差异后，可以开展流行病学研究，这些研究结果可能适用于整个美国。本报告描述了登记处及其运作的几个组织方面，并给出了可以从登记处数据中轻松计算出的信息和统计类型的示例。卒中确诊的完整性以及登记的大量人口也为任何感兴趣的研究人员提供了一个绝佳机会，去研究一方面医疗、社会和人口状况与另一方面卒中风险之间的关系；研究预防和治疗方案的疗效；以及确定在一个明确界定的人群中的医疗保健需求。
