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Stroke

The worldwide burden of stroke—a blurred photograph

Nature Reviews Neurology volume 10, pages 127–128 (2014)Cite this article

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An Addendum to this article was published on 25 March 2014

This article has been updated

Assessing the burden of stroke is essential to improve stroke care. Two recent systematic reviews provide a picture of the worldwide stroke burden. However, poor-quality data sources in low-income and middle-income countries make this a blurred photograph, and set a challenge to expand stroke registries.

Two recently published systematic reviews have raised great interest in the global burden of stroke, which has increased over the past two decades. The first article focuses on the global and regional burdens of stroke, the main findings of which are increases in the absolute numbers of people with stroke and stroke-related deaths, as well as an increase in the global burden of stroke in terms of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) in middle-income and low-income countries.1 The second study, which addresses the global and regional burden of first-ever ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke, shows the burden of both of these types of stroke has increased in the past two decades in terms of the absolute number of people with stroke, stroke-related deaths, and DALYs, despite a decrease in age-standardized mortality.2 Compared with ischaemic stroke, haemorrhagic stroke has a lower incidence, is responsible for a higher burden of disease, and is the cause of more stroke-related deaths and DALYs in middle-income and low-income countries.2

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Change history

  • 25 March 2014

    The correspondence details for this article have changed: the authors wish to update the email address to exuperio.diez@idipaz.es. The details have been amended in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology and Stroke Centre, La Paz University Hospital, IdiPAZ Health Research Institute, Autonomous University of Madrid, Paseo de la Castellana 261, 28046, Madrid, Spain

    Blanca Fuentes & Exuperio Díez Tejedor

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  1. Blanca Fuentes
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  2. Exuperio Díez Tejedor
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Correspondence to Exuperio Díez Tejedor.

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Fuentes, B., Tejedor, E. The worldwide burden of stroke—a blurred photograph. Nat Rev Neurol 10, 127–128 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2014.17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2014.17

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