Temporal trends of stroke incidence over 14 years in Iran: Findings of a large-scale multi-centric hospital-based registry

Background: The burden of stroke is high worldwide, especially in low-middle income countries. We aim to explore the temporal trends of the incidence rate (IR) of stroke over 14 years in Iran’s central areas. Methods: Stroke registry as part of cardiovascular disease (CVD) registry in Isfahan that focused on hospitalized patients (≥15 years) with first or recurrent stroke from 2001 to 2015. Factors included date of symptoms, demographics, management, survival at 28 days, date of admission, history of stroke, and other CVD and clinical diagnosis according to Computer Tomography Scan. We calculated age-, sex, and place-of-residence-adjusted IR based on multiple reference populations. Data were analyzed by bootstrap robust zero-truncated negative binomial regression models using R Statistical Software. Results: From 19,174 registered patients with stroke assessed by ICD-10; 18,010 (93.93%) cases were identified based on WHO-MONICA. Approximately 51% of hospitalized stroke patients were women. The average annual increase in stroke incidence based on ICD-10 ranged from 1.56% (95% CI, 0.14, 2.97) to 2.67% (95% CI, 1.25, 4.09) for different reference populations. In addition, a similar trend was also observed for stroke IR based on WHO-MONICA during the study period for the whole reference population, with an average annual change of 2.5% (95% CI, 1.28, 3.72) to 3.64 % (95% CI, 2.47, 4.82). Conclusion: Given that temporal trends of stroke have increased in both sexes, especially in Iran’s urban areas, prevention programs are needed for public awareness and physician motivation in order to identify risk factors as well as primary and secondary prevention.