Relationship between White Blood Cell Count and Mortality in Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke

Background: Stroke is the most frequent and highly fatal neurologic disease. Many clinical symptoms and paraclinical methods have been suggested have a prognostic value in stroke, including the shift in white blood cell (WBC) count which has attracted much attention at the moment. The objective of this study is to assess the prognostic value of admission-time WBC count of patients with acute ischemic stroke on their hospital mortality in Rafsanjan.

Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive-cross sectional study on 200 patients with acute ischemic stroke, that the diagnosis was confirmed with neuroimaging. WBC count during the first 12 hours of admission was assessed. Subsequently, the patients were divided in 2 groups of normal WBC count and high WBC count and followed until discharge or death. The data were analyzed statistically using Fisher Exact test.

Results: In our study, 54% of our patients were men and the others were women. 17.5% of patients had abnormal WBC count. 27 patients (13.5%) were expired, consisting of 5 patients with increased WBC count and 22 with normal WBC count. No significant relationship was observed between the WBC count and hospital mortality. Also, no significant relationship was observed between the WBC count and hospital mortality in terms of age and gender.

Conclusion: The findings of our study show that WBC count doesn’t have any predictive value on hospital mortality in patients with ischemic stroke.