Gastrointestinal disturbances in stroke.

The study includes analysis of 498 post-mortems of stroke patients treated in the Department of Vascular Diseases of the CNS Warsaw, in the years 1974-1985. In that group, gastrointestinal complications were found in 120 cases (24.09%) which included 82 cases of ischaemic focus in the brain and 38 cases of haemorrhagic focus due to cerebral haemorrhage. Of the 120 patients with gastrointestinal complications 75 (63.5%) had massive haemorrhage into the lumen of the alimentary tract; in half, gastrointestinal haemorrhage had occurred within 7 days of the stroke. No statistically significant correlation was observed between the type of mucosal lesion and the site of ischaemic or haemorrhagic lesion in the brain.