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Abstract
Objectives The aims of the present study were to establish the prevalence of stroke, and to explore the association between stroke prevalence and sociodemographic and health factors, disability, cognitive functioning and care needs among older adult residents in Singapore.
Setting Data were drawn from the Well-being of the Singapore Elderly study—a cross-sectional epidemiological survey conducted from 2012 to 2013 on older adults living in Singapore.
Participants Participants were Singapore residents (citizens and permanent residents) 60 years and above who were living in Singapore during the survey period . Older adult residents who were institutionalised were also included in this study. Those who were not living in Singapore or who were not contactable were excluded from the study. The response rate was 65.6 % (2565/3913). A total population sample of 2562 participants completed the survey. Participants comprised 43.6% males and 56.4% females. The sample comprised 39.4% Chinese, 29.1% Malay, 30.1% Indian and 1.4% other ethnicities .
Primary and secondary outcome measures History of stroke, along with other health and mental health conditions, disability and cognitive functioning, were determined by self-report.
Results Weighted stroke prevalence was 7.6% among older adults aged 60 and above. At a multivariate level, Malay ethnicity (OR 0.41, p=0.012, 95% CI 0.20 to 0.82), hypertension (OR 4.58, p=0.001, 95% CI 1.84 to 11.40), heart trouble (OR 2.45, p=0.006, 95% CI 1.30 to 4.63), diabetes (OR 2.60, p=0.001, 95% CI 1.49 to 4.53) and dementia (OR 3.57, p=0.002, 95% CI 1.57 to 8.12) were associated with stroke prevalence.
Conclusions Several findings of this study were consistent with previous reports. Given that Singapore’s population is ageing rapidly, our findings may indicate the need to review existing support services for stroke survivors and their caregivers. Future research could investigate the association between various sociodemographic and health conditions and stroke prevalence to confirm some of the findings of this study.
- stroke prevalence
- stroke risk factors
- epidemiology
- south-east asia
- multi-ethnic
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Footnotes
Contributors WLT wrote the first draft of the manuscript. EA provided statistical analysis. JAV, ELSS, VS, SShafie, SShahwan and YJZ were involved in data collection and literature review searches. MS and SAC wrote the protocol and designed the study. LLN provided intellectual input in the area of data collection and analyses. All authors contributed and approved the final manuscript.
Funding The study was funded by the Ministry of Health, Singapore and the Singapore Millennium Foundation of the Temasek Trust.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Obtained.
Ethics approval National Healthcare Group Domain Specific Review Board and the SingHealth Centralised Institutional Review Board.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Data are not available for online access; however, readers who wish to gain access to the data can write to the senior author (MS) at mythily@imh.com.sg with their requests. Access can be granted and subjected to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the research collaborative agreement guidelines. This is a requirement mandated for this research study by our IRB and funders.