Trends in survival and recovery from stroke: evidence from the National Long-Term Care Survey/Medicare data.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Improvements in recovery rates may contribute to an increase in healthy life expectancy. It is unclear, however, whether such changes take place because health researchers traditionally deal with changes in incidence and survival from diseases. The purpose of this study was to test for the presence of time trends in the recovery rate from stroke. METHODS: We compared age patterns of recovery rates from stroke evaluated in 2 subcohorts represented in the National Long-Term Care Survey data linked with the Medicare service use files. RESULTS: We found a statistically significant increase in recovery rate between 1994 and 1999 for females but not for males. CONCLUSIONS: Time trends in recovery rate from stroke exist and can be detected from available data. The roles of influential factors and causes of sex difference in recovery improvement deserve further studies.