Older stroke patients may not get needed anti-clotting drugs

By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) – Following a first stroke, older, poorer and less educated patients may have lower odds of getting clot-busting drugs to help prevent another blockage of blood to the brain, a Swedish study suggests. “Our findings confirm socioeconomic inequalities in prescription of anticoagulants,” lead study author Maria Sjolander, a researcher in statistics and pharmacology at Umea University, said by email. The researchers studied roughly 12,000 first-time stroke patients who also had a heart rhythm disorder known as atrial fibrillation that raises stroke risk and found just 36 percent of them were prescribed anticoagulant drugs when they left the hospital.
Go to Source