Awareness within the French population concerning stroke signs, symptoms, and risk factors.

Full Abstract

BACKGROUND: Effective implementation of early treatment strategies for stroke requires prompt admission to hospital which could be delayed for several reasons such as poor awareness of population. OBJECTIVE: To assess current public knowledge of stroke. METHODS: We randomly selected 411 persons living in Poitou-Charentes (area of nearly 1,700,000 persons in France) and performed an open-ended questionnaire regarding stroke risk factors, stroke warning signs, source of information, and stroke attitude. RESULTS: Most of the patients (62.3%) were able to name three risk factors but not to report the most important and less than half of the respondents were able to recognize one or more stroke warning sign. Predictors of adequate knowledge of both stroke risk factors and warning signs were similar and included age and sources of information (books, magazines and newspapers or family members or relatives who have suffered from a stroke or general practitioner). CONCLUSIONS: This study emphasizes that knowledge of stroke risk factors and warning signs was moderate at best. Improvements can only result from using a broad range of sustained educational efforts through simple and understandable school education or public media.

Author information

Author/s: Neau, Jean-Philippe (JP); Ingrand, Pierre (P); Godeneche, Gaëlle (G);

Affiliation: Department of Neurology, CHU La Milétrie, 86021 Poitiers Cedex 05, France. jph.neau(-atsign-)chu-poitiers.fr

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Clinical neurology and neurosurgery (Clin Neurol Neurosurg), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Oct; vol 111 (issue 8) : pp 659-64

Dates: Created 2009/08/24; Completed 2009/11/03;

PMID: 19595502, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/3/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.