The main goal of this study was to determine the relative incidence of the different subtypes of stroke in a group of people from Guayaquil, considered of a relatively high socioeconomic stratus, to establish a relationship that was previously proposed as a probable cause of the etiologic stroke subtype variation found in our city. We conducted a retrospective study, in which were identified 100 consecutive patients with acute first-ever stroke admitted to the stroke unit of Hospital-Clínica Kennedy. The results were: male prevalence (57% vs 43%), mean age of onset 70 years for infarcts and 54 years for hemorrhages. Sixtythree patients had a cerebral infarction and 37 had an intracranial hemorrhage. As conclusion, we found that this relatively high prevalence of hemorrhages were related to rupture of intracranial aneurysms, and that most infarcts were related to hypertensive vasculopathy. We also found that the main risk factors were arterial hypertension and cardiopathies (p<0.05). Is important to resolve the controversies that were provoke in the last years about onset variability in types and subtypes of stroke, for which more studies and further are required.
