Clinical features of acute cerebral infarction in young adults at our hospital

Abstract

We retrospectively evaluated the clinical features of acute cerebral infarction in young adults at our hospital. We enrolled a series of 2,080 patients with acute cerebral infarction admitted to our hospital between Jan. 1, 2002 and Dec. 31, 2006. We divided them into two groups: a young group (50 years old and younger) comprising 93 patients (4.5%), and an aged group (51 years old and older) comprising 1,987 patients (95.5%). The mean age of the young group was 42.4±8.8 years old and the youngest age was 15 years old. The proportions of hypertension, diabetes mellitus and atrial fibrillation in the aged group were significantly higher than those in the young group, On the other hand, the proportions of smoking, headache at onset, other etiologies such as arterial dissection and angiitis, and unknown etiologies in the young group were significantly higher than those in the aged group. The Modified Rankin Scale at discharge was significantly lower in the young group. There were no statistically significant differences in proportions of patients visiting a hospital within 3 hours and patients with rt-PA administration between the two groups. The proportion of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation in cardioembolic stroke within the young group was low, but the proportion of patients with some congenital cardiac disorders was high. The rapid increase of strokes with arteriosclerosis at 40 years old suggests that stroke with arteriosclerosis is appearing at a younger age than ever before.