Smoking and Stroke in Appalachian Kentucky

Author Info

Dignan Mark Kitzman Patrick S Gutti Subhash N Gutti Swathi Rao Sujata Athena Kheibari Grant Victor

Corresponding Author

Dignan Mark
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY

A B S T R A C T

This project used a retrospective case series design to investigate factors associated with stroke in a rural area in Appalachian Kentucky. The south-eastern region of the U.S. is often referred to as the ‘stroke belt,’ and includes the Appalachian region of the state of Kentucky. Data were collected from medical records of patients from a neurology practice and regional hospital with a diagnosis of stroke from March 2012 through November 2015. Data were collected without personal identifiers and included demographic characteristics, stroke type, treatments received, and referrals for additional care including rehabilitation. Data from a total of 84 stroke cases diagnosed between March 2012 and November 2015 were included. Of the 84 cases, 46 (54.8%) were female and all but one was Caucasian. The distribution by race is consistent with the population of the region. The stroke cases ranged in age from 41 to 92 (M=66.3) and the age at stroke diagnosis ranged from 40 to 90 (M=65.7). Fourteen (16.7%) had evidence of a previous stroke at diagnosis. For smokers, the mean age at diagnosis was 62.7 for smokers while for non-smokers it was 67.5. The study reported smoking rates that were nearly three-times the national average, and the smokers in this study were found to have stroke onset approximately five-years earlier than non-smokers. The results from this case series support the need for further investigation on stroke prevalence and factors contributing to continued risk for stroke in Appalachia.

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Mon 09, Jul 2018
Accepted: Sun 22, Jul 2018
Published: Tue 31, Jul 2018

Copyright

© 2023 Dignan Mark. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.NNB.2018.10.006