Pediatric stroke in the United States and the impact of risk factors.

One approach to studying pediatric stroke is to analyze a national database that contains data on a significant number of children. We examined an administrative dataset of hospital discharges from the United States, Kids' Inpatient Database 2003 (KID2003), for ICD-9 codes associated with hemorrhagic or ischemic stroke in children aged >30 days to 20 years. 3156 children were discharged with a diagnosis of ischemic stroke and 2022 with hemorrhagic stroke after statistical weighting. The odds for a male discharged with hemorrhagic stroke was 1.5 (CI: 1.35-1.68) and for ischemic stroke was 1.37 (CI: 1.24-1.51) compared with a female. The odds for males discharged with a stroke were greatest for ages 16 to 20 years and least for 4 years. This study confirms a male predominance for stroke. The odds for hospitalization with a stroke diagnosis are greatest in very young and older adolescent males. Hemorrhage is an important stroke subtype in children.