Risk factors for ischemic stroke post bone fracture.

Stroke is one of the most devastating complications after bone fracture. However, due to the rarity of the complication, the risk factor for post fracture stroke remains unknown. We retrospectively reviewed 2914 fractured adults referred to the first affiliated hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, a regional referral center of China, from January 2008 to May 2013. As a result, among the 2914 patients, 13 of them had newly onset stroke within a median of 4 days after bone fractures (ranging from 1 to 25 days). The overall prevalence of post fracture stroke was 0.446%. The post fracture stroke prevalence in patients older than 68 years old was 3.542%. Compared to patients with vertebral (0.124%) and femur (0.619%) fractures, patients with hip fractures had a higher prevalence of post fracture stroke (2.320%) (P < 0.001). Univariate analysis showed that hyperlipidemia, history of prior fracture, more comorbidities, higher CHADS2 score and higher neutrophil counts at admission were more often observed among patients who had post fracture stroke (P < 0.05). With the multiple logistic regression analysis, we identified that history of prior fracture was an independent risk factor for post fracture ischemic stroke (OR = 6.417, 95% CI = 1.581-26.051, P = 0.009). Our study illustrates that the history of prior fracture is associated with a 6.4-fold increase in the risk of post fracture ischemic stroke.