A third of stroke patients have diabetes and screening for it could help address the poor outcomes in stroke associated with dysglycaemia, Victorian researchers say.
A meta-analysis of 39 studies involving almost 360,000 patients with acute stroke has estimated the prevalence of diabetes to be 28% overall and 33% in patients with ischaemic stroke.
The literature review, co-authored by researchers in the Department of Neurology, Austin Health, also showed that acute ‘stress’ hyperglycaemia is associated with poor outcomes after stroke, including poorer neurological and functional measures, longer hospital stay, higher readmission rates and stroke recurrence rates.
However there was some heterogeneity in results for long term diabetes and some stroke outcomes such as mortality, according to the authors of the review published in the Journal of Diabetes Investigation.
Since traditional blood glucose measures such as fasting blood glucose are independent predictors of stroke outcomes, there may be a screening role for these in acute stroke patients, the researchers suggested.