STROKES may be four times more common among infants and young children than was previously believed, a study suggests.
Methods of identifying strokes that work in adults could be missing large numbers of cases in children, researchers claim.
Experts in the US studied the health records of 2.3 million children in northern California.
Using a combination of diagnostic codes (ICD-9 codes) entered on medical charts and data from X-rays and other tests, they confirmed 205 cases of ischaemic stroke.
The incidence rate was 2.4 strokes per 100,000 individuals over the course of one year.
This was two to four times higher than previous estimates of between 0.54 and 1.2 per 100,000 US children per year, which were based solely on diagnostic code searches.
