Survival of unselected stroke patients in a stroke unit compared with conventional care.

Background: Recent meta-analyses have reported a beneficial effect of stroke units compared with traditional care, both on patient survival and on dependency after one year.
Aim: To determine whether these results can be reproduced outside a clinical trial setting.
Setting: A medium-sized general hospital.
Methods: From 1993 to 1998, all patients aged >60 years with suspected acute stroke were allocated either to a stroke unit or general medical wards according to date of birth (day of the month). Patients were identified retrospectively, using a discharge diagnosis of ICD-9 codes 431, 434 and 436. We assessed 30-day and 1-year survival.
Results: In the stroke unit, 926/1128 patients survived at 30 days, vs. 905/1141 in the general medical wards (p=0.08). Beyond the first 30 days, there was no difference in survival (p=0.27). Under Cox regression analysis, there was a 20% reduction in mortality in the stroke unit after 30 days compared with the general medical wards (RR 0.80, p=0.02) after adjusting for age, gender, stroke type and season of the year.
Discussion: In this, the largest single-centre study to evaluate the survival benefit of a stroke unit, survival at 30 days was increased, although not significantly so. Survival at one year was unchanged.