A Population Study of Stroke in West Ukraine Incidence, Stroke Services, and 30-Day Case Fatality

Background and Purpose— According to World Health Organization statistics, Ukraine has extremely high stroke mortality. No population-based prospective studies of stroke incidence have been performed yet in this European country with ≈50 million inhabitants. High reported rates of stroke mortality in official statistics conflict with some locally published incidence data in Ukraine. To obtain accurate data, we evaluated stroke incidence and 30-day case fatality in a prospective population study in the West Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod with a population of 126 000 inhabitants. Methods— Case certification by neurologists and follow-up at 30 days after stroke for all patients identified by any level of the health service system were performed for a 12-month period. Results— We identified 352 stroke cases. The age-standardized incidence was 341 and 238 of 100 000 and mortality was 83 and 69 of 100 000 with the use of the European or world standard population for standardization. Mean age of stroke patients was ...