Article Sidebar
Article Details
Articles published in the Ghana Medical Journal may not be published elsewhere without the consent of the publishers. Request for consent for reproduction of material published in the Ghana Medical Journal should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief. The publisher of this Journal reserves the right of copyright of all articles published in the Journal. It should also be understood by all authors that articles approved for publication in the journal are also deemed for publication online by the publisher.
Ghana Medical Journal is an Open Access journal and applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (Creative Commons Attribution License) 4.0 International. See details on the Creative Commons website (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) to articles and other content published in the Journal.
Main Article Content
Causes and clinical presentation of stroke in children in Cameroon
Abstract
Objective: The aim was to determine the aetiological factors and clinical and paraclinical aspects of stroke in children in Cameroon.
Design: retrospective study of the records
Setting: At two university hospitals in the city of Yaoundé (Yaoundé Gynaeco-Obstetric and Paediatric Hospital and the Chantal Biya Foundation Mother and Child Centre)
Participants: 47 children with stroke for seven and half years
Interventions: Data were collected from medical records. The variables studied included clinical and paraclinical data.
Main outcome measures: Key variables were summarised in the form of mean ± standard deviation, frequencies and percentages
Results: The mean age was 6.5+2.8 years. The Male Female sex ratio was 1.8:1. The average consultation time was 31.8 hours. Hemiplegia/hemiparesis (95.7%) was the main clinical manifestation, associated with signs such as convulsions (27.7%), fever (46.8%) and pallor (27.7%). Ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke accounted for 41 cases (87.2%) and 6 cases (12.8%), respectively. The aetiological factors for ischaemic stroke were sickle cell disease (72.3%), sepsis (4.2%), protein S deficiency (2.1%) and dilated cardiomyopathy with mitral insufficiency (2.1%). The aetiology was not found in 3 patients (6.4%) with ischaemic stroke. Apart from sickle cell disease (66.6%), the aetiological factors for haemorrhagic stroke were idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (16.7%) and haemophilia B (16.7%). Ischaemia mainly involved the middle cerebral artery (86.1%). Haemorrhagic attacks were mainly supratentorial.
Conclusion: In urban Cameroon, strokes frequently occur around the age of 6, with a predominance of ischaemic strokes resulting in motor deficits. Sickle cell disease is the most common cause.
