Who Is At Risk - What Is A Stroke: Stroke

Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School

Who is at risk?

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States and other industrial countries, trailing only heart disease and cancer. In the United States, about 700,000 people have a stroke each year. If you have a stroke, the risk of dying from it increases with age: 88% of deaths from stroke are in people 65 and older. About two-thirds of people who have a stroke have some resulting disability and require rehabilitation.

The odds of having a stroke more than double for each decade after age 55. Two-thirds of strokes involve people over 65. Men and women are about equally likely to have a stroke, but women have a greater risk of dying from one. Race is another risk factor. African Americans, for example, are almost twice as likely to suffer a stroke as are whites.

Although you can't change your age or race, you can take steps to reduce other risk factors for stroke, especially ischemic stroke. The most common risk factors for both ischemic stroke and TIAs are high blood pressure (hypertension), diabetes, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and obesity. All of these factors affect the health of your blood vessels — increasing the risk not only of stroke, but also of heart disease. That's why medications and other steps you take to reduce the risk of an ischemic stroke will also benefit your heart (see "Treating ischemic stroke").

Some types of hemorrhagic strokes are more likely to occur in people with chronic high blood pressure (see "Deep hypertensive hemorrhages"). But other types of hemorrhagic strokes seemingly strike out of the blue. Although abnormal blood vessel conditions such as an aneurysm (a bubble in the blood vessel wall that could rupture) or an arteriovenous malformation (an abnormal tangle of blood vessels) increase the risk, these conditions may only be discovered inadvertently while you are undergoing testing for something else — or may not be discovered until a stroke occurs.

Last updated:	September 05, 2008