| Objective: Stroke is the term commonly used in clinical, but it is not thestrict term. It's not a disease but a syndrome caused by a number of differentcauses, in which ischemic stroke is the most common one. Ischemic stroke iscaused by a variety of reasons which lead to the reduction of cerebral bloodflow. The problem of stroke in women has become wide concern in recentyears, because the epidemiological data have shown their greater severity,mortality, and morbidity. Therefore, our study was to investigate stroke interms of gender differences in order to arouse the attention to female stroke.The greater prevalence of stroke in men is well known, but recent issuesemphasize the importance of stroke in women. The study of genderdifferences of stroke is increasingly concerned with the gender differences ofstroke in the incidence/prevalence, risk factors, clinical data, treatment andprognosis in recent years. In order to achieve a better prevention effect, wemust fully conscious of the gender differences of stroke and its possible causes,which provide evidences for making control strategies.Previous studies compared the differences between women and menthrough prevention, therapy, rehabilitation and prognosis, which showed thatsex determined some clear differences in patients suffering from first-everstrokes, but few studies had been done on the therapeutic window and vascularlesions. So the differences of ischemic stroke in ages, risk factors, firstsymptoms, therapeutic window and imaging between women and men werereviewed retrospectively by using the Trial of Org10172in Acute StrokeTreatment (TOAST) classification.Methods:From July2011to January2012,1068consecutive patientswith first-ever ischemic stroke were admitted to The Second Hospital of HebeiMedical University. All patients fulfilled the imaging and epidemiological data, which included gender, age, vascular risk factors, first symptoms, therapeuticwindow, clinical data and stroke subtype classification according to theTOAST criteria. Some patients are with incomplete data. All1068patientswere grouped by gender and age, the therapeutic window and vascular lesionswere reviewed retrospectively; risk factors and first symptoms of patients withclinical data were reviewed retrospectively.The analyses of age, the therapeutic window, risk factors, the firstsymptoms and imaging on women and men were performed with the SPSSpackage13.0for Windows. The univariate analysis was performed with theχ2test for dichotomous variables. Values of P<0.05were consideredsignificant.Results: There were1068ischemic stroke patients, including730male,338female;728cases with clinical data, including471male and257female.The average age of female patients was higher than men (P<0.05); the peakage of male was45～59(P<0.05), the peak age of female was60～69(P<0.05).Smoking, alcoholism and hyperlipidemia were more common in male patients(P<0.05). Coronary heart disease, diabetes were the risk factors of female(P<0.05). In addition hypertension, rheumatic heart disease and the incidenceof atrial fibrillation were predominant in women, P>0.05. The difference wasnot statistically significant. Limb weakness was the most common symptom inthe first cerebral infarction. Women suffered from confusion (P<0.05) to agreater extent than men did, with no differences in other symptoms. Nodifferences were found for the therapeutic window. Hyperacute cerebralinfarction (HCI) was less predominant in both women and men. The locationand area of first-ever ischemic stroke in women and men were similar. Moremen than women were affected by atherothrombotic and lacunar strokes(P<0.05), whereas women suffered more cardioembolic strokes than men (P<0.05).Conclusion: Above all, sex determines some clear differences of age,risk factors, imaging, stroke subtypes in patients with first-ever ischemicstrokes, but the therapeutic window of all patients were late. It is necessary to encourage people to raise awareness of ischemic stroke. |
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