Stroke Awareness in Patients with Incident Stroke Compared to Patients without Stroke or Ischemic Heart Disease

Stroke awareness is known to influence treatment seeking and risk reduction behavior, but there is limited data from Sri Lanka and South Asia.

To describe stroke awareness in incident stroke patients and to compare with patients without stroke and/or ischemic heart disease (IHD) in a Sri Lankan tertiary-care center.

We studied awareness of stroke in all incident stroke patients admitted to a tertiary-care center in Sri Lanka and compared with a group of age- and sex-matched patients without stroke and/or IHD, over 2 years. Knowledge on stroke mechanisms, risk factors, symptoms, prognosis, treatment, and prevention were evaluated using a 40-item interviewer-administered questionnaire and converted to a composite score of 100%. Total awareness was categorized as Very poor (<24%), Poor (25%-49%), Good (50%-74%), and Very good (>74%).

One hundred and sixty four incident stroke patients (mean age 62.0 ± 11.5 years; 64.6% males) and 164 patients without stroke and/or IHD were studied. Mean stroke awareness was 47.79% ± 14.6 in stroke patients, and 47.73% ± 14.9 in the nonstroke and/or IHD patients (P = .95). Of the associations studied, better stroke awareness (>50%) was associated only with higher education levels (OR 1.90, 95%CI 1.33-2.72, P < .001) in stroke patients.

Stroke awareness is not satisfactory in incident stroke patients and is no better than in patients without stroke and/or IHD. Better stroke awareness was associated with higher education levels.