Determinants of long-term mortality after stroke.

Risk factors of death for a population of 409 patients with well-defined cerebrovascular disease (patients with subarachnoidal hemorrhage excluded) admitted to the Stroke Unit were studied with the aid of the life table technique, log rank test, and multivariate analysis with BMDP's program for regression on the survival curves with Cox's proportional hazard model. The estimated proportion of survivors was 77% after three months, 69% after one year, and 32% after five years. Patients with intracerebral hemorrhage and embolic cerebral infarction had the worst outcome. Impaired consciousness on admission was the most important risk factor of death followed by high age, previous cardiac failure, diabetes mellitus and male sex.