Post Stroke Depression and Lesion Location: A Hospital based cross sectional study

Abstract

Introduction: Depression is seen in about 40% of patients with stroke and is a common neuropsychiatric consequence. Post-stroke depression (PSD) can be related to the site and side of infarct and psychological stressors. There are conflicting results in this area of research and dearth of studies from India. Thus the study aims to assess the prevalence of PSD in stroke patients and the relation between site and side of stroke with PSD. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was done among 40 stroke patients recruited by consecutive non-random sampling in Pushpagiri Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Thiruvalla. A semi-structured proforma was used to collect the socio-demographic, illness-related and neuroimaging details. Hamilton depression rating scale was used to assess the severity of depression. SPSS 20.0 was used for statistical analysis. Results: 64% of the patients with left-sided lesion had PSD, whereas only 20% had PSD among the right-sided group which was significant with a p-value of 0.005.PSD was seen in 64% (N=9) of patients with subcortical lesions which were significantly high (p=0.006) when compared to 14% (N=2) of the patients with PSD among the cortical group. Conclusion: This study showed a high prevalence of PSD and its correlation with left-sided cortical and subcortical lesions. Eliciting the relationship between the lesion and depressive symptoms may help shed light on the neurobiology of depressive disorders.