The Time Trend of Callssuspected of Having A Stroke with The Emergency Medical Services and Its Forecasting for The Next 5 Years in Iran

Backgrounds: Stroke is known as the second leading cause of death and the first leading cause of disability in developing and underdeveloped countries and the annual absolute numbers of people with stroke, stroke survivors, stroke-related deaths, and overall stroke burden have shown an increasing trend. This study was aimed to investigate the time trend of calls for suspected stroke received by the Emergency Medical Servicesand to predict this trend for the next 5 years inShiraz, Iran.Methods: This was a descriptive-analytical ecological study with time seriesdata. The required data were extracted from Shiraz Emergency Medical Center between2013and2019. ITSM 2000, Excel 2013 and SPSS, version 19.0 were used to analyze and predict the data.Results: During 2013-2019, a total of 844004 calls were received by EMS call center in Shiraz city, of which 6620 calls were suspected of strokes. The number of suspected cases of stroke between 2013and2016demonstrated a steady trend in a certain range, while between 2016 and 2017, it has significantly increased and after that the number of stroke cases has reached a relative stability.In a short time period, like monthly or seasonally, the highest incidence of stroke occurs in February, the coldest month of the year in shiraz city, and the lowest incidence of stroke occurs in July and August, the warm times of the year in Shiraz city, and this trend is repeated every year. Also, the predict of stroke incidence for the next 5 years indicated that the trend is almost constant with a slightdecline, that is the total number of stroke caseswill diminish by 6% in 2024 compared to 2019. Conclusion:The results of study demonstrated that the long-term trend of reported suspected calls cases of stroke in EMSis currently stable following an increase in Iran, and itis expected to decline in the upcoming years. Besides, in short-term seasonal trend, the number of reported suspected calls cases of stroke in EMS is higher in cold seasons than in warm seasons.