How Socioeconomic Factors Affect Stroke Frequency and Mortality
Lei Helton
Nicole Serrano
Christina Thomas
Introduction
A research team led by Dr. Juliet Addo published a literature review from the Journal of the American Heart Association looking at associations between socioeconomic status and stroke. Even though strokes affect people of all walks of life, some are more vulnerable to strokes due to their economic status, race or genetics. This paper aims to find how socioeconomic factors affect stroke frequency and mortality.
Methods
As a collection and evaluation of stroke related studies, this review has no specific subjects or variables, but instead a method of finding material to analyze. By using stroke-related search terms, the researchers referenced multiple sources. Electronically, MEDLINE and EMBASE databases were searched. Manually, reference lists from identified sources were consulted for other relevant publications. Search terms listed include stroke, cerebrovascular accident/disorder, cerebral hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, socioeconomic factors, social class, income, poverty, deprivation, manual and nonmanual occupation, recurrence, care, and inequality. After searching such a wide range of articles, titles and abstracts were screened for inclusion. Finally, the remaining articles were screened for relevance, and analyzed in the paper. This step started with 530 sources screened for keyword inclusion, and ended with a final result of 42 sources cited. By virtue of being a review of many sources, this article lacks an average method, and in turn details how exactly sources were gathered.
Results and Discussion
This paper found that there was an increased incidence and mortality of stroke in groups with a lower socioeconomic status (SES), showing that while there was a 42 percent decrease in stroke incidence in high-income countries (HIC), low-middle income countries (LMIC) showed a greater than 100 percent increase in stroke incidence. Researchers also found that death rates and disability-adjusted life-years lost are 3.5 times higher in low-income countries compared to middle- and high-income countries, with death rates projected to increase faster for low-income countries. Additionally, an increased incidence of most subtypes of stroke (except for hemorrhagic) in people with a lower SES was found. For death rates, an inverse association was found between SES and stroke mortality. Similarly, higher rates of stroke risk factors have been found in populations with lower SES, especially concerning smoking. People with a higher education and higher SES in general were found to have less severe strokes and receive more postacute stroke rehabilitation, too.
One advantage of this paper is that it talks about the disparities between ethnicities, location, economic class, risks and age. It allows the reader to understand who is most likely at risk for a stroke. The paper gives examples of these disparities to help the reader better understand what types of factors they are looking at. Another example is that the paper explains each factor and who it affects in an orderly structure to make it easier to find relevant information. However, one disadvantage of this paper is that it looks at articles over the course of a few years instead of conducting experiments. As the world is changing, information like this can easily be outdated. Another disadvantage of this paper is that the data needs to be more specific. While it is hard to get a good sample size of different aspects of the world, it is hard to make connections using the information they have gathered since it is generalizing huge regions of the world. Further research can improve the results of the paper by acquiring larger sample sizes for a specific factor in order to obtain more accurate results.
Works Cited
Addo, J., Juliet Addo From King's College London (J.A., Ayerbe, L., Luis Ayerbe From King's College London (J.A., Mohan, K. M., Keerthi M. Mohan From King's College London (J.A., Crichton, S., Siobhan Crichton From King's College London (J.A., Sheldenkar, A., Anita Sheldenkar From King's College London (J.A., Chen, R., Ruoling Chen From King's College London (J.A., Wolfe, C. D. A., Charles D.A. Wolfe From King's College London (J.A., McKevitt, C., Christopher McKevitt From King's College London (J.A., Addo, C. to J., & Al., E. (2012, February 23). Socioeconomic status and stroke. Stroke. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.639732.
