Abstract WMP104: Mortality And Recurrence Within 1 Year After Ischemic Stroke For Urban Vs Rural US Medicare Beneficiaries

Background: Approximately 14% of the US population resides in rural areas, which have higher rates of chronic disease and are often medically underserved. We compared 1-year outcomes after ischemic stroke for Medicare beneficiaries living in urban vs rural areas. Methods: We identified all Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries aged ≥65 years discharged alive from US acute-care hospitals with ischemic stroke in 2015 to 2017. Patients were followed up to 1 year through 2018 for death or ischemic stroke recurrence and categorized according to geographic remoteness of their residence using the Rural-Urban Community Area codes. We balanced patient characteristics between the rural/urban categories using stabilized inverse probability weights (IPW) based on patient demographic and clinical characteristics. We created adjusted Kaplan-Meier curves based on the IPW and fit Cox models to assess differences in 1-year all-cause mortality and recurrent stroke weighted by the IPW and accounting for competing risks. Results: There were 536,930 stroke patients (32,635 isolated rural, 40,240 small rural, 66,320 large rural, 397,735 urban; mean age 79.0 years, 54.7% women, 82.5% White). For isolated rural, small rural, large rural, and urban residents, 1-year adjusted mortality rates were 24.1%, 24.6%, 24.7%, and 22.9%, and 1-year stroke recurrence rates were 8.0%, 7.8%, 7.9%, and 8.1%, respectively. Compared with urban residents, isolated rural (HR 1.07, 95% CI 1.04-1.09), small rural (1.09, 1.07-1.12), and large rural (1.10, 1.08-1.12) residents had greater risk of death within 1 year after stroke, but there was little difference in recurrence (Fig. A). Urban residents had the lowest mortality across regions, but there was variation among the rural subcategories and for recurrence in region-stratified analyses (Fig. B). Conclusions: Ischemic stroke patients living in urban areas had a lower risk of mortality within 1 year compared with those living in more rural areas.