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Stroke in Children Rare But Costly

THURSDAY, July 9 (HealthDay News) -- Strokes in American youngsters under the age of 20 cost at least $42 million a year, a new study finds.

The incidence is not high -- between two and four per 100,000 young people annually, said Dr. Warren Lo, lead author of the report in the July 9 issue of Stroke, but there is growing concern about the cost of medical care in such cases.

"There is awareness that medical costs in this country are going up substantially, so we were curious about them in terms of stroke in young people," said Lo, an associate professor of pediatrics and neurology at Ohio State University and a pediatric neurologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. "There are not many analyses out there because of a perception that this is a relatively uncommon disorder."

Lo and his collaborators did a detailed study of data on 2,224 strokes recorded for American children from infancy to age 20 in the national Kids' Inpatient Database for 2003. Some of their findings included:

Strokes with subarachnoid hemorrhage, bleeding between the brain and the skull, required an average hospital stay of 11.2 days, at a cost of more than $31,000.

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