Overall rates of long-term survival following stroke are improving, but Black individuals experience worse long-term outcomes compared to white individuals, according to University of Cincinnati research published online July 15 in Neurology ® , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. UC's David Robinson, MD, corresponding author on the research, said prior studies had examined short-term stroke outcomes of 30 or 60 days, but this time the team looked at survival rates five years past a person's stroke. This was the first attempt to look at a much longer period of follow-up time after a stroke, since a lot of the interventions we've come up with have more effect long term than they do in the short term.
We've never been able to show that outcomes from strokes were definitively improving over longer periods of time." David Robinson, a UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute physician researcher and assistant professor in the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine in UC's College of Medicine Researchers pulled data from the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Stroke Study, which has been following stroke epidemiology in a five-county region in Greater Cincinnati since 1993. Robinson said this area is a microcosm of the United States, representing similar representations of race, educational attainment and socioeconomic status as the country as a whole.
Among patients with acute ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke, five-year mortality after.