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 need to be settled for the 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 CVDs risk factors of patients with confirmed Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS) from June 2019 to December 2020 were analyzed in May 2021. 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 CVDs risk factors were more likely to be males, individuals with younger age and without medical insurance or CVDs history. Conclusions: The overall awareness of the CVDs risk factors was suboptimal among AIS patients in Shenzhen, especially for the existing dyslipidemia. Age was an independent factor associated with the lack of awareness of the CVDs risk factors. The stroke screening program should be extending to younger people.