Awareness of risk factors for cerebrovascular diseases among acute ischemic stroke patients in Shenzhen, China

ABSTRACT

Background and purpose

Unawareness of the risk factors is one of the most important issues that need to be settled for stroke prevention. We aimed to evaluate the awareness of risk factors for cerebrovascular diseases (CVDs) among acute ischemic stroke patients and to investigate the characteristics of patients who were unaware of their risk factors in Shenzhen, China.

Methods

Registered data on awareness of CVD risk factors of patients with confirmed acute ischemic stroke (AIS) from June 2020 to December 2022 were analyzed in May 2023. The data were extracted from the database of Shenzhen Quality Control Center for Management of Cerebrovascular Diseases.

Results

Totally, there were 5147 AIS patients with complete data eligible for this study. AIS patients’ awareness regarding existing hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and atrial fibrillation (AF) was 76.1%, 76.2%, 24.2%, and 53.4%, respectively. Patients who were lack of awareness of the CVD risk factors were more likely to be males, individuals with younger ages, and those without medical insurance or a CVD history.

Conclusions

The overall awareness of the CVD risk factors was suboptimal among AIS patients in Shenzhen, especially for the existing dyslipidemia. The health education of AIS should be further improved in males as well as individuals without medical insurance or any CVD histories. Age was an independent factor associated with the lack of awareness of the CVD risk factors. The stroke screening program should be extended to younger people.

KEYWORDS:

• Awareness
• risk factors
• cerebrovascular diseases
• prevention

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Shenzhen Quality Control Center for Management of Cerebrovascular Diseases, involving 29 hospitals in Shenzhen. We thank these participants in the study and express our gratitude to the nurses and doctors who were involved in the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

Lijie Ren and Yang Wang conceived and designed the study. Zhihao Lei and Shiyu Hu performed the data collection. Shiyu Hu performed the statistical analysis and paper writing. Lijie Ren and Yang Wang reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Data Availability statement

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. All patients or their guardians were provided with informed consent to participate in this medical quality control program. The data were public for application and de-identified. All experimental protocols were approved by the ethics committee of Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01616412.2024.2381161

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Scientific Research Items of Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee (GJHZ20200731095602009) and the clinical research projects of Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital (No. 20203357015).