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[Risk factors for ischemic stroke. I. Conventional risk factors]
R Gil de Castro1, A C Gil-Núñez
1Unidad de Ictus, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, España.
Insights
Stroke is a major health issue, often caused by modifiable factors like high blood pressure and diabetes. Identifying these risk factors helps prevent strokes and reduce mortality.
Area of Science:
- Neurology
- Cardiology
- Public Health
Context:
- Stroke represents a significant vascular epidemic in developed nations.
- It is a leading cause of mortality in Spain, particularly for women.
Purpose:
- To review modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors for ischemic stroke.
- To enable identification of high-risk individuals for targeted interventions.
Summary:
- Non-modifiable factors include age, sex, genetics, race, geography, and climate.
- Established modifiable risk factors encompass arterial hypertension, cardioembolic diseases, atherosclerosis markers, diabetes mellitus, and transient ischemic accidents.
- Understanding these factors is crucial for stroke risk assessment.
Impact:
- Facilitates the design of preventive and therapeutic strategies.
- Aims to reduce the incidence and recurrence of strokes.
- Contributes to lowering overall stroke-related morbidity and mortality.
Introduction:
Stroke, together with ischemic cardiopathy, may be considered to be a vascular epidemic in the developed world, where it is a major social and health problem. In Spain it is the commonest cause of death in women and the second commonest in men.
Development And Conclusions:
In this article we review the risk factors which cannot be modified (age, sex, inheritance, race, geography and climate) and the well-established risk factors which can be modified (arterial hypertension, cardiopathies with a high risk of embolization, markers for atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus and transient ischemic accidents). A wide understanding of these risk factors permits the identification of persons with a high risk of having an ischemic stroke. Therefore preventive and therapeutic measures to reduce individual risk from strokes (and their recurrence) and hence reduce morbimortality from this, can be designed.