• Yi-Kung Lee, Chen-Wen Lee, Ming-Yuan Huang, Chen-Yang Hsu, and Yung-Cheng Su.
• Emergency Department, Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, No,2, Minsheng Rd, Chiayi County 622, Dalin Township, Taiwan. drsu119@gmail.com.
• Scand J Trauma Resus. 2014 Jan 1;22:66.

BackgroundIt is known that the risk of stroke in patients with traumatic brain injury might be increased. However, the relationship between mild traumatic brain injury and ischemic stroke has never been established. We conducted a study of patients in Taiwan with mild traumatic brain injury to evaluate if they had a higher risk of stroke compared with the general population.MethodsWe utilized a sampled National Health Insurance claims database containing one million beneficiaries. We followed all adult beneficiaries older than 18 years from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2010 to determine if they were diagnosed with ischemic stroke. We further identified patients with mild traumatic brain injury and compared their risk of ischemic stroke with the general population.ResultsWe identified 24,905 patients with mild traumatic brain injury and 719,811 patients without mild traumatic brain injury. After controlling for age, gender, urbanization level, socioeconomic status, diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, hyperlipidemia, history of alcohol intoxication, malignancies, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, smoking, obesity, epilepsy, peripheral artery disease and Charlson Comorbidity Index score, the adjusted hazard ratio for ischemic stroke was 1.46 (95% confidence interval, 1.33-1.62).ConclusionMild traumatic brain injury is an independent significant risk factor for ischemic stroke.

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