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Research Article

Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on stroke admission in Thailand: a quasi-experimental, ecological study on national database

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Article: 2270261 | Received 10 Jan 2022, Accepted 09 Oct 2023, Published online: 23 Oct 2023
 

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of COVID-19 outbreak on stroke admission by using a national database. A quasi-experimental, ecological study using the national database of Thailand was conducted. The study period was between January 2017 and August 2020 before and after COVID-19 outbreak starting from March 2020. Numbers of stroke admission were evaluated before and after the COVID-19 outbreak by an interrupted time series analysis for both pre- and post-COIVD-19 outbreak. There were 381,891 patients admitted throughout Thailand. Of those, 292,382 patients (76.56%) were admitted due to thrombotic stroke followed by hemorrhagic stroke (73,130 patients; 19.15%) and embolic stroke (16,379 patients; 4.29%). During pre-COVID-19 outbreak, all stroke subtypes had an increasing trend with a coefficient of 0.076 (p value < 0.001) for thrombotic stroke, 0.003 (p value < 0.001) for embolic stroke and 0.012 (p value = 0.025) for hemorrhagic stroke. The COVID-19 outbreak had significantly effect on reductions of incidence rates of thrombotic and hemorrhagic stroke with a coefficient of −2.412 (p value < 0.001) and −0.803 (p value = 0.023). The incidence rates of three stroke subtypes were increasing prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. The COVID-19 outbreak significantly impacts hospital admission rates of both thrombotic and hemorrhagic stroke subtypes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Disclaimer

The comments, discussions and recommendations contained in this article have been summarised from the database. They do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the affiliated organisations of authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Research and Graduate Studies, Khon Kaen University and North-Eastern Stroke Research Group, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand.