Introduction: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most com-mon arrhythmia in clinical practice both in women and men, and is associated with an important socioe-conomic burden. Differences between women and men in relation to stroke are increasingly being recognized. Methods: We enrolled 161 consecutive patients dia-gnosed with atrial fibrillation-related cardioembolic stroke, admitted to the emergency department of a ter-tiary care hospital between January 2015 and January 2016. We analyzed demographic and medical factors, NIHSS scores, and outcomes.
Results: Of 161 consecutive hospitalized patients, 70 patients were men and 91 were women. The male to female ratio was 1.34. The mean age of males was 72.26±8.47 years compared to females, 69.07±10.12 years (p=0.035). Of 161 patients, 116 (72.04%) had permanent AF, 5 (3.10%) had persistent AF and 40 (24.84%) had paroxysmal AF. A history of prior stroke, hypertension, dyslipidemia and obesity was more com-monly found in women, whereas smoking and ische-mic heart disease were more frequently encountered in men. After adjustment for age and gender, smoking in men (p=0.05) and prior stroke in women (p=0.05) were found to be independent predictors of stroke. Di-abetes was equally distributed between the two genders (p=0.201). The CHA₂DS₂-VASc score was significantly higher in women than in men (4.96±1.55 vs. 3.56±1.51; p<0.001). Women were more likely to have more seve-re strokes (p<0.001) and also, to have a longer hospital stay (p=0.05).
Conclusions: There appears to be gender-based diffe-rences in the risk factor profile and length of stay in atrial fibrillation-related cardioembolic stroke patients aged 70 years or older. Knowledge of these differences could help influence stroke prevention, thereby impro-ving stroke burden in a tertiary care hospital.