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Health & Medicine for Senior Citizens
Women Fare Worse Following Stroke; Difference Greatest in Those Over Age 75
Follow-up study to look at cognitive decline in men and women before and after stroke
Feb. 7, 2014 The good news about stroke is that more people survive stroke now than 10 years ago due to improved treatment and prevention. The bad news: women who survive stroke have a worse quality of life than men and the difference is greatest for the elderly, according to a study published just one day after the American heart and stroke associations issued the first guidelines aimed specifically at preventing strokes in women.
Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center compared the quality of life in men and women who had a stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA). Their results are reported in the Feb. 7 online issue of the journal Neurology.
A total of 1,370 patients ages 56 to 77 from the AVAIL registry a national, multicenter, longitudinal registry of ischemic stroke and TIA patients were included in the study.
The patients quality of life was measured at three months and one year after a stroke or TIA using a formula that assesses mobility, self-care, everyday activities, depression/anxiety and pain.
We found that women had a worse quality of life than men up to 12 months following a stroke, even after considering differences in important socio-demographic variables, stroke severity and disability, said Cheryl Bushnell, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist and senior author of the study.
As more people survive strokes, physicians and other healthcare providers should pay attention to quality of life issues and work to develop better interventions, even gender-specific screening tools, to improve these patients lives.
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Women Fare Worse Following Stroke; Difference Greatest in Those Over Age 75