Seasonal Variations in Stroke Occurrence.

BACKGROUND: Understanding seasonal variations in stroke can help stakeholders identify underlying causes in seasonal trends, and tailor resources appropriately to times of highest needs. We sought to evaluate the seasonal occurrence of stroke and its subtypes. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using administrative data from January 1st, 2003, to December 31st, 2017, in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. We evaluated seasonal variations in stroke occurrence by subtype, via age/sex standardized rates and adjusted rate ratios using Poisson regressions. In those with stroke, we evaluated 30-day case fatality risks by season, adjusted for age, sex, stroke type, and comorbid conditions, and then used Cox proportional hazard models to estimate the effect of season on the fatality. The administrative data used in this study were from the Canadian Institute for Health Information's Discharge Abstract Database, the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System Database, the Ontario Registered Persons Database, and the 2006 and 2011 Canada Census and linked administrative databases. RESULTS: During our study period, we observed 394,145 strokes or TIA events, with a decrease in monthly hospitalization/emergency department visits per 100,000 people between January 2003 and December 2017 from 24.22 to 17.43. Compared to the summer, overall stroke occurrence was similar in the spring but slightly lower in the fall (adjusted rate ratio [aRR] 0.97, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.96-0.98) and winter (aRR 0.94, 95% CI: 0.94-0.95). There were minor variations by stroke subtype. Winter was associated with the highest risk of stroke case fatality compared to the summer (12.4% vs. 11.4%, adjusted hazard ratio 1.10, 95% CI: 1.07-1.13). CONCLUSIONS: We found seasonal variations in stroke occurrence and case fatality, although the absolute differences were small. Further work is needed to better understand how environmental or meteorological factors might affect stroke risk.

Secondary Stroke Prevention in People With Schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: People with schizophrenia are less likely than those without to be treated for cardiovascular disease. We aimed to evaluate the association between schizophrenia and secondary preventive care after ischemic stroke. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this retrospective cohort study, we used linked population-based administrative data to identify adults who survived 1 year after ischemic stroke hospitalization in Ontario, Canada between 2004 and 2017. Outcomes were screening, treatment, and control of risk factors, and receipt of outpatient physician services. We used modified Poisson regression to model the relative risk of each outcome among people with and without schizophrenia, adjusting for age and other factors. Among 81 163 people with ischemic stroke, 844 (1.04%) had schizophrenia. Schizophrenia was associated with lower rates of screening for hyperlipidemia (60.5% versus 66.0%, adjusted relative risk [aRR] 0.88 [95% CI, 0.84-0.93]) and diabetes (69.4% versus 73.9%, aRR 0.93 [95% CI, 0.89-0.97]), prescription of antihypertensive medications (91.2% versus 94.7%, aRR 0.96 [95% CI, 0.93-0.99]), achievement of target lipid levels (low-density lipoprotein <2 mmol/L) (30.6% versus 34.6%, aRR 0.86 [95% CI, 0.78-0.96]), and outpatient specialist visits (55.3% versus 67.8%, aRR 0.78 [95% CI, 0.74-0.83]) or primary care physician visits (94.5% versus 98.5%; aRR 0.96 [95% CI, 0.95-0.98]) within 1 year. There were no differences in prescription of antilipemic, antiglycemic, or anticoagulant medications, or in achievement of target hemoglobin A1c ≤7%. CONCLUSIONS: People with stroke and schizophrenia are less likely than those without to receive secondary preventive care. This may inform interventions to improve poststroke care and outcomes in those with schizophrenia.

Association Between Time to Treatment With Endovascular Thrombectomy and Home-Time After Acute Ischemic Stroke.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Home-time is a patient-prioritized stroke outcome that can be derived from administrative data linkages. The effect of faster time-to-treatment with endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) on home-time after acute stroke is unknown. METHODS: We used the Quality Improvement and Clinical Research registry to identify a cohort of patients who received EVT for acute ischemic stroke between 2015 and 2022 in Alberta, Canada. We calculated days at home in the first 90 days after stroke. We used ordinal regression across 6 ordered categories of home-time to evaluate the association between onset-to-arterial puncture and higher home-time, adjusting for age, sex, rural residence, NIH Stroke Scale, comorbidities, intravenous thrombolysis, and year of treatment. We used restricted cubic splines to assess the nonlinear relationship between continuous variation in time metrics and higher home-time, and also reported the adjusted odds ratios within time categories. We additionally evaluated door-to-puncture and reperfusion times. Finally, we analyzed home-time with zero-inflated models to determine the minutes of earlier treatment required to gain 1 day of home-time. RESULTS: We had 1,885 individuals in our final analytic sample. There was a nonlinear increase in home-time with faster treatment when EVT was within 4 hours of stroke onset or 2 hours of hospital arrival. There was a higher odds of achieving more days at home when onset-to-puncture time was <2 hours (adjusted odds ratio 2.36, 95% CI 1.77-3.16) and 2 to <4 hours (1.37, 95% CI 1.11-1.71) compared with ≥6 hours, and when door-to-puncture time was <1 hour (aOR 2.25, 95% CI 1.74-2.90), 1 to <1.5 hours (aOR 1.89, 95% CI 1.47-2.41), and 1.5 to <2 hours (1.35, 95% CI 1.04-1.76) compared with ≥2 hours. Results were consistent for reperfusion times. For every hour of faster treatment within 6 hours of stroke onset, there was an estimated increase in home-time of 4.7 days, meaning that approximately 1 day of home-time was gained for each 12.8 minutes of faster treatment. DISCUSSION: Faster time-to-treatment with EVT for acute stroke was associated with greater home-time, particularly within 4 hours of onset-to-puncture and 2 hours of door-to-puncture time. Within 6 hours of stroke onset, each 13 minutes of faster treatment is associated with a gain of 1 day of home-time.

Association Between Immigration Status and Ambulatory Secondary Stroke Preventive Care in Ontario, Canada.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Secondary stroke preventive care includes evaluation and control of vascular risk factors to prevent stroke recurrence. Our objective was to evaluate the quality of ambulatory stroke preventive care and its variation by immigration status in adult stroke survivors in Ontario, Canada. METHODS: We conducted a population-based administrative database-derived retrospective cohort study in Ontario, Canada. Using immigration records, we defined immigrants as those immigrating after 1985 and long-term residents as those arriving before 1985 or those born in Canada. We included community-dwelling stroke survivors 40 years and older with a first-ever stroke between 2011 and 2017. In the year following their stroke, we evaluated the following metrics of stroke prevention: testing for hyperlipidemia and diabetes; among those with the condition, control of diabetes (hemoglobin A1c ≤7%) and hyperlipidemia (low-density lipoprotein <2 mmol/L); medication use to control hypertension, diabetes, and atrial fibrillation; and visit to a family physician and a specialist (neurologist, cardiologist, or geriatrician). We determined age and sex-adjusted absolute prevalence difference (APD) between immigrants and long-term residents for each metric using generalized linear models with binomial distribution and an identity link function. RESULTS: We included 34,947 stroke survivors (median age 70 years, 46.9% women) of whom 12.4% were immigrants. The receipt of each metric ranged from 68% to 90%. Compared with long-term residents, after adjusting for age and sex, immigrants were slightly more likely to receive screening for hyperlipidemia (APD 5.58%; 95% CI 4.18-6.96) and diabetes (5.49%; 3.76-7.23), have visits to family physicians (1.19%; 0.49-1.90), receive a prescription for antihypertensive (3.12%; 1.76-4.49) and antihyperglycemic medications (9.51%; 6.46-12.57), and achieve control of hyperlipidemia (3.82%; 1.01-6.63). By contrast, they were less likely to achieve diabetes control (-4.79%; -7.86 to -1.72) or have visits to a specialist (-1.68%; -3.12 to -0.24). There was minimal variation by region of origin or time since immigration in immigrants. DISCUSSION: Compared with long-term residents, many metrics of secondary stroke preventive care were better in immigrants, albeit with small absolute differences. However, future work is needed to identify and mitigate the factors associated with the suboptimal quality of stroke preventive care for all stroke survivors.

Proportion of Life Spent in Canada and the Incidence of Multiple Sclerosis in Permanent Immigrants.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: While immigrants to high-income countries have a lower risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) compared with host populations, it is unknown whether this lower risk among immigrants increases over time. Our objective was to evaluate the association between proportion of life spent in Canada and the hazard of incident MS in Canadian immigrants. METHODS: We conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study in Ontario, using linked health administrative databases. We followed immigrants, who arrived in Ontario between 1985 and 2003, from January 1, 2003, to December 31, 2016, to record incident MS using a validated algorithm based on hospital admission or outpatient visits. We derived proportion of life spent in Canada based on age at arrival and time since immigration obtained from linked immigration records. We used multivariable proportional hazard models, adjusting for demographics and comorbidities, to evaluate the association between proportion of life in Canada and the incidence of MS, where proportion of life was modelled using restricted cubic spline terms. We further evaluated the role of age at migration (15 or younger vs older than 15 years), sex, and immigration class in sensitivity analyses. RESULTS: We included 1.5 million immigrants (49.9% female, mean age 35.9 [SD 14.2] years) who had spent a median of 20% (Q1-Q3 10%-30%) of their life in Canada. During a mean follow-up of 13.9 years (SD 1.0), 934 (0.44/100,000 person-years) were diagnosed with MS. Compared with the median, a higher risk of MS was observed at higher values of proportion of life spent (e.g., hazard ratio [70% vs 20% proportion of life] 1.38; 1.07-1.78). This association did not vary by sex (p(sex × proportion of life) = 0.70) or immigration class (p(immigration class × proportion of life) = 0.13). The results did not vary by age at migration but were statistically significant only at higher values of proportion of life for immigrants aged 15 years or younger at arrival. DISCUSSION: The risk of incident MS in immigrants varied with the proportion of life spent in Canada, suggesting an acculturation effect on MS risk. Further work is required to understand environmental and sociocultural factors driving the observed association.

Ninety-Day Stroke Recurrence in Minor Stroke: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Trials and Observational Studies.

BACKGROUND: Risk of recurrence after minor ischemic stroke is usually reported with transient ischemic attack. No previous meta-analysis has focused on minor ischemic stroke alone. The objective was to evaluate the pooled proportion of 90-day stroke recurrence for minor ischemic stroke, defined as a National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale severity score of ≤5. METHODS AND RESULTS: Published papers found on PubMed from 2000 to January 12, 2021, reference lists of relevant articles, and experts in the field were involved in identifying relevant studies. Randomized controlled trials and observational studies describing minor stroke cohort with reported 90-day stroke recurrence were selected by 2 independent reviewers. Altogether 14 of 432 (3.2%) studies met inclusion criteria. Multilevel random-effects meta-analysis was performed. A total of 6 randomized controlled trials and 8 observational studies totaling 45 462 patients were included. The pooled 90-day stroke recurrence was 8.6% (95% CI, 6.5-10.7), reducing by 0.60% (95% CI, 0.09-1.1; P=0.02) with each subsequent year of publication. Recurrence was lowest in dual antiplatelet trial arms (6.3%, 95% CI, 4.5-8.0) when compared with non-dual antiplatelet trial arms (7.2%, 95% CI, 4.7-9.6) and observational studies 10.6% (95% CI, 7.0-14.2). Age, hypertension, diabetes, ischemic heart disease, or known atrial fibrillation had no significant association with outcome. Defining minor stroke with a lower National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale threshold made no difference - score ≤3: 8.6% (95% CI, 6.0-11.1), score ≤4: 8.4% (95% CI, 6.1-10.6), as did excluding studies with n<500%-7.3% (95% CI, 5.5-9.0). CONCLUSIONS: The risk of recurrence after minor ischemic stroke is declining over time but remains important.

Population Trends of New Prescriptions for Antihyperglycemics and Antihypertensives Between 2014 and 2022.

BACKGROUND: In the wake of pandemic-related health decline and health care disruptions, there are concerns that previous gains for cardiovascular risk factors may have stalled or reversed. Population-level excess burden of drug-treated diabetes and hypertension during the pandemic compared with baseline is not well characterized. We evaluated the change in incident prescription claims for antihyperglycemics and antihypertensives before versus during the pandemic. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this retrospective, serial, cross-sectional, population-based study, we used interrupted time series analyses to examine changes in the age- and sex-standardized monthly rate of incident prescriptions for antihyperglycemics and antihypertensives in patients aged ≥66 years in Ontario, Canada, before the pandemic (April 2014 to March 2020) compared with during the pandemic (July 2020 to November 2022). Incident claim was defined as the first prescription filled for any medication in these classes. The characteristics of patients with incident prescriptions of antihyperglycemics (n=151 888) or antihypertensives (n=368 123) before the pandemic were comparable with their pandemic counterparts (antihyperglycemics, n=97 015; antihypertensives, n=146 524). Before the pandemic, monthly rates of incident prescriptions were decreasing (-0.03 per 10 000 individuals [95% CI, -0.04 to -0.01] for antihyperglycemics; -0.14 [95% CI, -0.18 to -0.10] for antihypertensives). After July 2020, monthly rates increased (postinterruption trend 0.31 per 10 000 individuals [95% CI, 0.28-0.34] for antihyperglycemics; 0.19 [95% CI, 0.14-0.23] for antihypertensives). CONCLUSIONS: Population-level increases in new antihyperglycemic and antihypertensive prescriptions during the pandemic reversed prepandemic declines and were sustained for >2 years. Our findings are concerning for current and future cardiovascular health.

Exploring the Inclusion of Person-Centered Care Domains in Stroke Transitions of Care Interventions: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association.

BACKGROUND: Health care teams along the stroke recovery continuum have a responsibility to support care transitions and return to the community. Ideally, individualized care will consider patient and family preferences, best available evidence, and health care professional input. Person-centered care can improve patient-practitioner interactions through shared decision-making in which health professionals and institutions are sensitive to those for whom they provide care. However, it is unclear how the concepts of person-centered care have been described in reports of stroke transitional care interventions. METHODS: A secondary analysis of a systematic review and meta-analysis was undertaken. We retrieved all included articles (n=17) and evaluated the extent to which each intervention explicitly addressed 7 domains of person-centered care: alignment of care with patients' values, preferences, and needs; coordination of care; information and education; physical comfort; emotional support; family and friend involvement; and smooth transition and continuity of care. RESULTS: Most of the articles included some aspects of person-centeredness; we found that certain domains were not addressed in the descriptions of transitional care interventions, and no articles mentioned all 7 domains of person-centered care. We identified 3 implications for practice and research: (1) delineating person-centered care components when reporting interventions, (2) elucidating social and cultural factors relevant to the study sample and intervention, and (3) clearly describing the role of family and nonmedical support in the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: There is still room for greater consistency in the reporting of person-centeredness in stroke transitions of care interventions, despite a long-standing definition and conceptualization of person-centered care in academic and clinically focused literature.

Validation of the Passive Surveillance Stroke Severity Score in Three Canadian Provinces.

BACKGROUND: Stroke outcomes research requires risk-adjustment for stroke severity, but this measure is often unavailable. The Passive Surveillance Stroke SeVerity (PaSSV) score is an administrative data-based stroke severity measure that was developed in Ontario, Canada. We assessed the geographical and temporal external validity of PaSSV in British Columbia (BC), Nova Scotia (NS) and Ontario, Canada. METHODS: We used linked administrative data in each province to identify adult patients with ischemic stroke or intracerebral hemorrhage between 2014-2019 and calculated their PaSSV score. We used Cox proportional hazards models to evaluate the association between the PaSSV score and the hazard of death over 30 days and the cause-specific hazard of admission to long-term care over 365 days. We assessed the models' discriminative values using Uno's c-statistic, comparing models with versus without PaSSV. RESULTS: We included 86,142 patients (n = 18,387 in BC, n = 65,082 in Ontario, n = 2,673 in NS). The mean and median PaSSV were similar across provinces. A higher PaSSV score, representing lower stroke severity, was associated with a lower hazard of death (hazard ratio and 95% confidence intervals 0.70 [0.68, 0.71] in BC, 0.69 [0.68, 0.69] in Ontario, 0.72 [0.68, 0.75] in NS) and admission to long-term care (0.77 [0.76, 0.79] in BC, 0.84 [0.83, 0.85] in Ontario, 0.86 [0.79, 0.93] in NS). Including PaSSV in the multivariable models increased the c-statistics compared to models without this variable. CONCLUSION: PaSSV has geographical and temporal validity, making it useful for risk-adjustment in stroke outcomes research, including in multi-jurisdiction analyses.

Age-Specific Association of Co-Morbidity With Home-Time After Acute Stroke.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the association of co-morbidity with home-time after acute stroke and whether the association is influenced by age. METHODS: We conducted a province-wide study using linked administrative databases to identify all admissions for first acute ischemic stroke or intracerebral hemorrhage between 2007 and 2018 in Alberta, Canada. We used ischemic stroke-weighted Charlson Co-morbidity Index of 3 or more to identify those with severe co-morbidity. We used zero-inflated negative binomial models to determine the association of severe co-morbidity with 90-day and 1-year home-time, and logistic models for achieving ≥ 80 out of 90 days of home-time, assessing for effect modification by age and adjusting for sex, stroke type, comprehensive stroke center care, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, year of study, and separately adjusting for estimated stroke severity. We also evaluated individual co-morbidities. RESULTS: Among 28,672 patients in our final cohort, severe co-morbidity was present in 27.7% and was associated with lower home-time, with a greater number of days lost at younger age (-13 days at age < 60 compared to -7 days at age 80+ years for 90-day home-time; -69 days at age < 60 compared to -51 days at age 80+ years for 1-year home-time). The reduction in probability of achieving ≥ 80 days of home-time was also greater at younger age (-22.7% at age < 60 years compared to -9.0% at age 80+ years). Results were attenuated but remained significant after adjusting for estimated stroke severity and excluding those who died. Myocardial infarction, diabetes, and cancer/metastases had a greater association with lower home-time at younger age, and those with dementia had the greatest reduction in home time. CONCLUSION: Severe co-morbidity in acute stroke is associated with lower home-time, more strongly at younger age.

Development and validation of a model to categorize cardiovascular cause of death using health administrative data.

Study objective: Develop and evaluate a model that uses health administrative data to categorize cardiovascular (CV) cause of death (COD). Design: Population-based cohort. Setting: Ontario, Canada. Participants: Decedents ≥ 40 years with known COD between 2008 and 2015 in the CANHEART cohort, split into derivation (2008 to 2012; n = 363,778) and validation (2013 to 2015; n = 239,672) cohorts. Main outcome measures: Model performance. COD was categorized as CV or non-CV with ICD-10 codes as the gold standard. We developed a logistic regression model that uses routinely collected healthcare administrative to categorize CV versus non-CV COD. We assessed model discrimination and calibration in the validation cohort. Results: The strongest predictors for CV COD were history of stroke, history of myocardial infarction, history of heart failure, and CV hospitalization one month before death. In the validation cohort, the c-statistic was 0.80, the sensitivity 0.75 (95 % CI 0.74 to 0.75) and the specificity 0.71 (95 % CI 0.70 to 0.71). In the primary prevention validation sub-cohort, the c-statistic was 0.81, the sensitivity 0.71 (95 % CI 0.70 to 0.71) and the specificity 0.75 (95 % CI 0.75 to 0.75) while in the secondary prevention sub-cohort the c-statistic was 0.74, the sensitivity 0.81 (95 % CI 0.81 to 0.82) and the specificity 0.54 (95 % CI 0.53 to 0.54). Conclusion: Modelling approaches using health administrative data show potential in categorizing CV COD, though further work is necessary before this approach is employed in clinical studies.