Increased risk for stroke in burn patients: A population-based one-year follow-up study

IntroductionThe study aimed to explore the frequency and risk of stroke following hospitalization for burn through the analysis of a population-based dataset in Taiwan.MethodsWe identified 692 hospitalized subjects who had received a diagnosis of burn. We randomly selected 2768 comparison subjects to match the study subjects by sex and age group. We individually tracked each subject for one year identifying all those who received a diagnosis of stroke during that period. Cox proportional hazards regressions were performed to calculate the longitudinal hazard of stroke between the two cohorts.ResultsWe found that the incidence rate of stroke during the one-year follow-up period was 6.65 (95% CI: 4.92–8.79) per 100 person-years and 2.75 (95% CI: 2.18–3.42) per 100 person-years for study cohort and comparison cohort, respectively. After adjusting for urbanization level, monthly income, geographic region, hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, hyperlipidemia, and chronic kidney disease, and censoring the cases that died from non-stroke causes, the hazard ratio (HR) for stroke during the one-year follow-up period for study cohort was 2.52 (95% CI = 1.73–3.68, P < 0.001) that of comparison subjects. We further analyzed the HR of stroke according to the extent of burned body surface area (<10%, 10–29%, and >29%). We found that there was no significant difference in the risk of stroke during the one-year follow-up period among these three groups of subjects.ConclusionsWe found that burn victims were at higher risk for subsequent stroke that matched comparison subjects during one-year follow-up.