ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to study stroke survival in Chile in a historic cohort from a random sample of 333 inpatients. All alive selected patients were visited and examined. All the death certificates were reviewed. The diagnosis was done by a neurologist, 35% had a CT scan. Survival was measured in days using lifetest procedure to generate survival curves, Cox's proportional hazards models in Stata 3.1 statistic package and logistic regression analysis. The mean age was 70.5 for the group of died and 62.3 years old for alive patients (p = 0.01). Infectious disease (p = 0.05), localization of stroke (p = 0.01) and rehabilitation (p = 0.005) were significant at univariate analysis. The cumulative probability of survival was 38 days, after one year and after five years, 48.1, 39.0 and 19.8%, respectively. The probability of survival by age, localization, heart disease and rehabilitation was statistically significant. Analysis of survival by sex, and previous stroke risk factors was not significant. Using Cox's proportional hazards regression we found that survival after 5 years depends on age (p = 0.03), rehabilitation (p = 0.008), infection (p = 0.05) and heart disease (p = 0.04). Stroke survival function is close to a decreasing exponential curve with high death probability at one month after the stroke. Survival is conditioned by stroke localization, age, heart disease and rehabilitation.
