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(Stroke. 2003;34:1455.)
© 2003 American Heart Association, Inc.

Original Contributions

Editorial Comment: Protein-Energy Undernutrition and Acute Stroke Outcome

Sheffield Institute for Studies on Ageing, The University of Sheffield, Community Sciences Centre, Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, UK

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Stroke is a common and devastating event that often results in death or major loss of independence with immense human and financial costs. Approximately 125 000 and 500 000 new or recurrent strokes occur each year in the United Kingdom and United States, respectively. The majority of strokes are not fatal, and the major burden is long-term disability. It is therefore the most important single cause of severe disability among Western people living in their own homes.¹ Stroke in the developing world is less well documented. A statement from the Asia-Pacific Consensus Forum on Stroke Management predicts that ‘In the next 30 years or so the burden of stroke will grow most in developing countries rather than in the developed world.‘²

Stroke produces an almost infinite range of possible combinations of loss of function such as difficulties in swallowing, hemiplegia, impaired consciousness, perceptual deficits, visual fields defects, cognitive impairment, and motor apraxia or paralysis. These deficits will have an obvious and variable impact on the stroke patient’s nutritional demands and actual intake. Many studies have shown that a significant number of stroke patients were undernourished on admission and their nutritional status deteriorated further while in hospital. Undernutrition was associated with increasing morbidity and mortality.^3-5 However, most of these studies suffered from methodological limitations.

In this issue of Stroke, Dennis et al⁶ report the results of an observational multicenter study of the relationship between baseline nutritional status and 6-month clinical outcome in 2955 hospitalized stroke patients. Their results indicate that . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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