Strokes Hurt Women's Lives more than Men

For those that suffer a stroke, recovery can be a difficult and daunting process. Yet a recent study shows that recovery can be more difficult for women than men.

The findings involving 1,370 patients ages 56 to 77 from the AVAIL registry, a national, multicenter, longitudinal registry of ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack patients, examined patients' quality of life three months to a year after a stroke or transient ischemic attack had taken place. To study this, they used a formula that assesses mobility, everyday activities, self-care, depression/anxiety and pain.  

"We found that women had a worse quality of life than men up to 12 months following a stroke, even after considering differences in important sociodemographic variables, stroke severity and disability," said lead researcher Cheryl Bushnell, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist, via the BBC. "As more people survive strokes, physicians and other healthcare providers should pay attention to quality of life issues and work to develop better interventions, even gender-specific screening tools, to improve these patients' lives."

The study results showed that women were significantly more likely than men to report three month months following a stroke. The study also revealed that women still had a lower quality of life scores when compared to men following a year after the stroke.

"We found that age, race and marital status accounted for the biggest differences between men and women at three months, with marital status being the most important," Bushnell concluded, via the news organization. "Even though the women in the study were older than the men, our study showed that age really had very little effect on quality of life."

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Neurology.