Cerebral Hemorrhage Latin America Case Study

INTRODUCTION
Spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage is the main type of cerebral hemorrhage, the second most common cause of stroke after the ischemic stroke (1). Its incidence increases with age, with people over 85 years having up to 10 times the risk of having a brain hemorrhage compared to those between 45 and 54 years (2). With increasing of life expectancy, an increase in the incidence of stroke is likely to occur, particularly in developing countries such as those from Latin America (3,4). Although the incidence of stroke in developed countries has reduced by 42% over the past four decades, this reduction is most likely due to decrease in the incidence of the ischemic form (1), so that a recent meta-analysis failed to demonstrate changes in the incidence of cerebral hemorrhage between 1980 and 2006 (5). The overall incidence of cerebral hemorrhage in this study was 24.6 per 100,000 people per year (19.7-30.7, 95% CI), but data from Latin America were limited.

Specifically talking about the lethality of spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage in Latin America, few data are available (5). Although there are studies on the international epidemiology of spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage (1,2,5), data about the epidemiology of spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage in Latin America are still scarce. Due to the high incidence and mortality of this disease, epidemiological studies will continue to be essential to public and preventive health