Strokes in children are rare, often have multiple causes, and have a different spectrum of risk factors than do strokes in adults, according to a report published online Nov. 15 in the Annals of Neurology.
The investigators recommend a thorough evaluation seeking treatable causes to prevent recurrence. “Our results confirm that rather than having a single cause, childhood stroke is a multifactorial process,” lead author Vijeya Ganesan, MD, from the Institute of Child Health in London, U.K., says in a news release. “In contrast to some previous studies, completely unexplained stroke was rare if patients were evaluated in detail.”
In this retrospective review of 212 pediatric patients who presented with a first arterial ischemic stroke, median age was five years, and 54% were male. As was found in earlier studies, about half (97 patients) had previous diagnoses of conditions predisposing to stroke, such as congenital heart disease or sickle cell disease. Among the remaining 115 patients who were healthy before stroke onset, 23 had a recent history of head trauma and 68 had had chickenpox. These conditions were significantly more common than in the group with previous diagnoses.
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