You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Original article
Trend of declining stroke mortality in China: reasons and analysis
  1. Wenzhi Wang1,2,
  2. David Wang3,
  3. Hongmei Liu1,2,
  4. Haixin Sun1,2,
  5. Bin Jiang1,2,
  6. Xiaojuan Ru1,2,
  7. Dongling Sun1,2,
  8. Zhenghong Chen1,2,
  9. Yongjun Wang4
  1. 1 Beijing Neurosurgical Institute, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
  2. 2 Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory of Clinical Epidemiology, Beijing, China
  3. 3 Department of Neurology, OSF/INI Comprehensive Stroke Center at SFMC, University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, Illinois, USA
  4. 4 Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing, China
  1. Correspondence to Dr Wenzhi Wang, Beijing Neurosurgical Institute, Capital Medical University; qgnfbwwz{at}163.com

Abstract

Introduction There is a downward trend of stroke-related mortality in the USA. By reviewing all published articles on stroke mortality in China, we analysed its trend and possible factors that have influenced the trend.

Methods Both English and Chinese literatures were searched on the mortality of stroke or cerebrovascular diseases in China. Potential papers related to this topic were identified from PubMed, Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, Wanfang Database, SINOMED and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases.

Results Comparing the results from the most recent population-based epidemiological survey and databank from the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the age-adjusted stroke mortality rate has shown a downward trend among both urban and rural population in the past 30 years in China. Comparing with 30 years ago, the rate of stroke mortality has decreased by more than 31% in urban/suburban population and 11% in rural population. In men, the age-adjusted stroke mortality rate decreased by 18.9% and in women by 24.9% between 1994 and 2013. Factors that may have contributed to the trend of decreased stroke mortality rate include (1) improved healthcare coverage and healthcare environment; (2) improved treatment options and medical technology; (3) support by government to educate the public on stroke and stroke prevention; and (4) improved public knowledge on stroke.

Conclusions The age-adjusted stroke mortality rate in China has shown a downward trend among both urban and rural population in the past 30 years. The major influencing factors that helped in reducing stroke mortality in China included improved healthcare coverage, healthcare environment, the updated treatment options and modern medical technology.

  • stroke
  • mortality
  • declining trend
  • influencing factors

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/svn-2017-000098

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

    • Correction notice This paper has been amended since it was published Online First. Owing to a scripting error, some of the publisher names in the references were replaced with ’BMJ Publishing Group'. This only affected the full text version, not the PDF. We have since corrected these errors and the correct publishers have been inserted into the references.