News - Hypertension Week of July 13, 2003/ Vol. 2 No. 28

Study: More Primary Care Doctors Mean Fewer Stroke Deaths

More primary care physicians may be a way of reducing the number of stroke deaths, according to a study reported in the July 4 rapid access issue of Stroke.

Study author Leiyu Shi of Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health found that an increase of ten primary care doctors per 100,000 population was associated with 1.5 fewer stroke deaths each year.

In their analysis, Shi and his colleagues found that the average state age-adjusted stroke death rate dropped about 17 percent between 1985 and 1995, a period in which the number of primary care physicians steadily increased from 5.02 to 6.04 per 10,000 population.

The researchers said the association between the presence of primary care physicians and the drop in stroke deaths may be due to new stroke prevention and treatment strategies that have become more common in primary care practice.

Those developments include better management of high blood pressure with new medications, improved treatments for heart attack survivors and attention to lifestyle-related risk factors.

"Although the availability of primary care is by no means a substitute for socioeconomic status or higher income, it is certainly another means to improve population health," said Shi.

"The study results also suggest that primary care reduces the impact of income inequality on stroke mortality," said Shi. "Public policy makers should target areas of income inequality for more primary care."

Other sources: American Stroke Association