Multimorbidity in stroke patients

One in four adults in the UK experiences two or more long term health problems (such as stroke, depression or hearing loss), a condition known as multimorbidity. Most stroke survivors have multimorbidity. International and national organisations such as the NHS agree that we need to design health services that are better arranged to help patients with multimorbidity. This project will describe how multimorbidity occurs among stroke survivors in order to help design better health services for them.

We intend to look at anonymised health records from 100,000 UK stroke survivors. We will identify patients with similar groups of long term health problems and describe how health outcomes, such as mortality or hospital admission, differ among these groups.

This study will support researchers to develop better treatments for people who have had a stroke and also suffer from additional long term health problems. Our findings will also help health workers and policy makers to identify and prioritise the most important needs of different groups of stroke survivors.