Frequency of Stroke Acquired Pneumonia in Patients Admitted In Intensive Care Unit with Stroke

Stroke is a highly morbid entity and it can be fatal directly due to neurological damage and affecting the respiratory system or can add to over all morbidity and mortality due to its associated complications like stroke associated pneumonia (SAP).

Objective: To determine the frequency of stroke acquired pneumonia in ICU patients.

Study Design: Descriptive case series.

Settings: Department of Medicine, THQ Hospital, Sargodha.

Period: Six months from October, 2020 to April, 2021

Material & Methods: In this study, the cases of either gender and age 30 to 70 years suffering from stroke within 12 hours were included. SAP was labelled on the basis of fever, cough and non homogenous opacities on chest X-ray.

Results: In the present study, 160 cases of stroke were included and out of these 82 (51.25%) were males and 78 (48.75%) females. The mean age of the subjects was 54.24±7.15 years and mean duration of stroke was 7.05±2.54 hours. There were 35 (21.88%) cases that had DM, 28 (17.50%) had HTN and 30 (18.75%) of cases had history of smoking. Stroke acquired pneumonia (SAP) was seen in 20 (12.50%) of the cases. SAP was seen in 12 (15.38%) female cases as compared to 8 (9.75%) males with p= 0.34. SAP was more seen in cases with DM where this was observed in 7 (20%) of the cases as compared to 13 (10.4%) with no DM with p= 0.15. SAP was seen in 5 (17.85%) cases with HTN and 4 (13.33%) cases with history of smoking with p values of 0.35 and 1.0 respectively. SAP was seen in 15 (14.42%) cases with duration of stroke 6-12 hours in contrast to 5 (8.92%) cases with duration less than this with p= 0.45.

Conclusion: Stroke acquired pneumonia is not uncommon and is seen in more than 1 out of every 10 cases and it is more seen in females and those with history of DM, HTN and duration of stroke 6 to 12 hours; though none of this variable was found statistically significant.