Stroke, disability, and dementia: results of a population survey.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Stroke, disability, and dementia often coexist in elderly people. We assessed the prevalence and mutual association of these disorders in an elderly rural population.

METHODS

We carried out a door-to-door survey on all subjects aged 65 years or over (n=1032) living in a rural community. To evaluate the associations between stroke and disability and between stroke and dementia, we compared stroke patients with all stroke-free subjects by means of two multiple logistic regression analyses. Subsequently, we performed a case-control analysis by comparing each stroke patient with two age- and sex-matched population control subjects.

RESULTS

We identified 80 stroke patients. After the exclusion of five incident cases, the prevalence of stroke was 7.3% (95% confidence interval [CI], 5.7 to 8.9). Sixty-five percent of stroke survivors and 23% of stroke-free subjects were disabled (age- and sex-adjusted odds ratio [OR], 6.3; 95% CI, 3.7 to 10.9). Thirty percent of stroke survivors and 5.7% of stroke-free subjects were demented. The OR for dementia (stroke patients versus all stroke-free subjects) was 5.8 (95% CI, 3.1 to 10.8) and became 3.4 (95% CI, 1.5 to 8.0) in the case-control analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

In our population, the prevalence of stroke was higher than in previous studies. Stroke survivors were more disabled and more at risk for dementia than stroke-free subjects.