Strokes take toll of Baby Boomers

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

The number of New Zealand deaths each day from strokes could more than triple to 60 within 30 years, the Stroke Foundation predicts.

Now, an average of 19 people a day die from the condition, which costs the economy and health services an estimated $154 million a year.

Strokes occur when a clot or narrowed arteries starve the brain of blood, or when a blood vessel bleeds into the brain.

It is third on the list of top killers of New Zealanders, behind heart disease and cancer.

About a third of those who have a stroke die as a result. A further third are left with disabilities, which can include varying degrees of paralysis or weakness, speech difficulties, incontinence, memory loss and loss of emotional control.

The predicted rise in the number of stroke deaths is attributed to a population that is both growing and ageing, rather than to a growing stroke incidence.

"The Baby Boomers are getting older, and stroke is a disease of older people," the Stroke Foundation's medical director, Dr Jonathan Baskett, said yesterday.

The incidence of the disease had dropped sharply in the 1960s and 1970s, but appeared to have levelled out since, he said.

Auckland University's Clinical Trials Research Unit aims to review all cases of stroke in the Auckland region in the year to next March and compare the findings with similar studies from 1981-82 and 1991-92.

A senior research fellow at the unit, Maree Hackett, said that although it appeared the number of stroke cases might be higher in the present study than in the previous one, there had probably been a decline in incidence.

If so, it would most likely be attributable to better management of patients in hospital, people's greater awareness of stroke risk factors such as smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise and high blood pressure, "but we will test all these theories out," she said.

The foundation, which is running a fundraising appeal this week, is offering stroke-risk self-assessment cards through the 800 pharmacies associated with the Pharmacy Guild.

The incidence of stroke deaths could be reduced if more people changed their lifestyles, the foundation says.

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