Stroke, disability, and dementia: results of a population survey

Stroke, disability, and dementia often coexist in elderly people. We assessed the prevalence and mutual association of these disorders in an elderly rural population.

We carried out a door-to-door survey on all subjects aged 65 years or over (n=1032) living in a rural community. To evaluate the associations between stroke and disability and between stroke and dementia, we compared stroke patients with all stroke-free subjects by means of two multiple logistic regression analyses. Subsequently, we performed a case-control analysis by comparing each stroke patient with two age- and sex-matched population control subjects.

We identified 80 stroke patients. After the exclusion of five incident cases, the prevalence of stroke was 7.3% (95% confidence interval [CI], 5.7 to 8.9). Sixty-five percent of stroke survivors and 23% of stroke-free subjects were disabled (age- and sex-adjusted odds ratio [OR], 6.3; 95% CI, 3.7 to 10.9). Thirty percent of stroke survivors and 5.7% of stroke-free subjects were demented. The OR for dementia (stroke patients versus all stroke-free subjects) was 5.8 (95% CI, 3.1 to 10.8) and became 3.4 (95% CI, 1.5 to 8.0) in the case-control analysis.

In our population, the prevalence of stroke was higher than in previous studies. Stroke survivors were more disabled and more at risk for dementia than stroke-free subjects.