 | | | | Related Healthscout Videos | |
|
Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 Dr. E. Steve Roach, director of pediatric neurology at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who said, "I've been studying stroke in kids for 20 years," added that "the new study confirms what I've been saying all that time. It's just way, way underdiagnosed."
Roach said he led two studies, one reported a decade ago, the other last year, that came to the same conclusion. "When we did a search of discharge records, a lot of them just did not show up," he said.
"Most people, and even most doctors, can't accept the idea that children have strokes," Roach said. "It's just a bias on the part of physicians that stroke just doesn't occur in children."
Text Continues Below
This new comparison of the two methods of identifying a pediatric stroke found that radiological evidence was much more sensitive than the billing code. The radiology method was far more sensitive (83 percent) than the billing code method (39 percent.)
The difference was even greater for strokes that occurred at the time of childbirth, with a sensitivity of 12 percent using the billing codes and 87 percent using radiological records.
But the study came with a word of caution. Because it was based on data from one health-care organization, it's not clear whether the difference in incidence between billing codes and radiological findings will be found elsewhere, the report noted.
More studies in different populations are needed to firm up the finding, Fullerton said.
Failure to identify a childhood stroke properly might not be an issue for the child's family, Fullerton said. "It is more an issue for those of us who investigate strokes," she said. "When we try to identify pediatric strokes, it is important that we recognize that we could be missing a large chunk of cases."
More information
Learn about pediatric stroke from the American Stroke Association.
Page: << Prev | 1 | 2
|
.gif)
