Adverse stroke outcomes among patients with bipolar disorder

Failure to deliver the standard stroke care is suspected to be a potential reason for disproportionately high mortality among patients with co-morbid bipolar disorder (BD). Few studies have explored adverse outcomes and medical care costs concurrently (as a proxy for care intensity) among patients with BD admitted for stroke. Data for this nationwide population-based study were extracted from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, on 580 patients with BD hospitalized for stroke (the study group) and a comparison group consisting of randomly selected 1740 stroke patients without BD matched by propensity scores. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR) for adverse in-hospital outcomes between study group and comparison group. We found that stroke patients with BD had significantly lower in-hospital mortality (3.28% vs. 5.63%), acute respiratory failure (2.59% vs. 5.57%), and use of mechanical ventilation (6.55% vs. 10.23%) than the comparison group. After adjusting for geographical location, urbanization level, monthly income, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and coronary heart disease, the odds of in-hospital mortality, acute respiratory failure, and use of mechanical ventilation in the BD group were 0.56 (95% CI: 0.34-0.92), 0.46 (95% CI: 0.26-0.80), and 0.63 (95% CI: 0.44-0.91), respectively. No differences were found in hospitalization costs and the length of hospital stay. With comparable hospitalization costs and length of hospital stay, we concluded that stroke patients with BD had lower in-hospital mortality and serious adverse events compared to stroke patients without BD.