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. 2010 Aug;41(8):1758-65.
doi: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.109.576066. Epub 2010 Jul 1.

Years of optimum health lost due to complications after acute ischemic stroke: disability-adjusted life-years analysis

Keun-Sik Hong  1 , Jeffrey L Saver, Dong-Wha Kang, Hee-Joon Bae, Kyung-Ho Yu, Jaseong Koo, Moon-Ku Han, Yong-Jin Cho, Jong-Moo Park, Byung-Chul Lee
Affiliations

Years of optimum health lost due to complications after acute ischemic stroke: disability-adjusted life-years analysis

Keun-Sik Hong et al. Stroke. 2010 Aug.

Abstract

Background and purpose: Complications after stroke increase disability or death. The disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) metric, developed by the World Health Organization to measure the global burden of disease, integrates both mortality and disability. Widely used in population-level data analyses, it has not been applied to individual patient-level data captured in outcome registries.

Methods: We analyzed patient-level data from the outcome registry of 1254 consecutive patients with acute ischemic stroke enrolled between September 1, 2004, and August 31, 2005, in South Korea. For each subject, we calculated DALY lost due to the qualifying stroke and then analyzed additional DALY lost due to complications after stroke.

Results: For 1233 patients with available 3-month outcomes, the average DALY lost due to the index stroke was 3.82 (95% CI, 3.68 to 3.96). Any complications, neurological complications, and medical complications occurred in 34.0%, 20.8%, and 24.0%, respectively. The additional DALYs lost associated with any, neurological, and medical complications were 2.11 (95% CI, 1.78 to 2.44), 2.15 (95% CI, 1.72 to 2.59), and 1.99 (95% CI, 1.59 to 2.40), respectively. Patients with 1 complication had 1.52 (95% CI, 1.15 to 1.89) additional DALY lost, and those with >or=2 complications had 2.69 (95% CI, 2.18 to 3.20) additional DALY lost.

Conclusions: Early poststroke complications deprive patients of approximately 2 years of optimum health. Greater numbers of complications are associated with greater loss of healthy life-years. DALY analysis quantifies the burden of poststroke complications with a uniform metric potentially useful for health system planners.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
3-month mRS outcome distributions Complications increased the proportion of patients with worse 3-month mRS outcomes. NCx: neurological complication, ISP: ischemic stroke progression, MCx: medical complication, Pn: pneumonia.
Figure 2
Figure 2
DALY lost distribution
Figure 3
Figure 3
DALYs lost and number of complications
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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