Association between Human Development Index and Delay on Arrival to Stroke Unit

Abstract

Background: Stroke outcomes depend somehow on the time taken from the symptoms onset until arrival to the specialized service. However, as it lacks literature exploring the impact of socio-demographics factors on this time, we investigated the association between Human Development Index and delay on arrival to specialized service. Design and setting: Cross-sectional study from a prospective cohort (PMID=33719516) at Hospital Geral Roberto Santos. Methods: From a total of 454 stroke patients, 156 were included in this study because they had registered address, time of admission and of symptoms onset. Patients had HDI defined by their address and were grouped into HDI categories. Results: In our sample, 57 (36,5%) individuals had medium HDI, 70 (44,9%) high HDI and 29 (18,6%) very high HDI. Very high HDI patients’ delay (2:01; 1:22-2:57) was lower than high HDI (3:05; 2:05-5:26) and medium HDI (2:25;1:45-4:04) patients. There was statistical significance comparing these groups (X²=11,41;p<0,05), but a post-hoc test revealed statistical difference just between the very high HDI and high HDI groups (p<0.05). Conclusions: We expected to find a direct relation between delay on arrival to the stroke service and HDI categories. However, this was not observed. *Authors contributed equally.