Cerebral infarction in young adults

ABSTRACT

Young adult stroke is not rare disease and have diverse causes. We studied 135 young adults aged 15 - 45 years who had been admitted to Severance Hospital with a diagnosis of cerebral infarction from January 1990 to June 1995. The results are as follows. 1. The diverse causes of earshot infarction in young adults have been found in most patients(88.2%). The major causes of cerebral infarction in young adults were atherosclerosis(32.6%) and cardioembolism(32.6%). The causes were significantly different between younger(15 - 30 years old) and older(31 - 45 years old) patients. 2. The major risk factors of atherosclerotic cerebral infarction were hypertension(29 patients), smoking(14 patients), and hyperlipidemia(11 patients). 3. The major causes of cardioembolism were valvular heart disease(21 patients) and prosthetic valve(I0 patients). The mitral valve prolapse was discovered only in one patient. 4. Fourteen patients had non-atherosclerotic vasculopathies. The moyamoya disease was the most common cause of them. 5. The other causes of cerebral infarction were found in 17 patients and the major causes were alcohol intoxication and postoperative thromboembolism. 6. The cerebral infarction occurred mostly in the carotid artery territory(95 patients) and the distribution of the involved vascular territory was not different between younger and older age groups. 7. The clinical outcomes were good in most patients (86, 7%). From the above results, we demonstrated that young adults with cerebral infarction had various causes and showed favorable clinical outcomes. We also found that the causes of cerebral infarction varied between younger and older groups. Our findings suggest that careful and thorough case-by-ease evaluation may be mandatory to clarify the causes of cerebral infarction in young adults.