This section presents estimates of the prevalence of stroke in the UK. The prevalence of stroke is a measure of how many people in the population have experienced a stroke at some point in the past.

Estimates of the prevalence of having suffered a stroke are hard to obtain by subtype of stroke (e.g. haemorrhagic or ischaemic stroke) since verification of the stroke subtype is performed by brain imaging equipment, such as CT scanning, which is not performed for all cases of stroke. However, estimates of the prevalence of having suffered any kind of stroke are available, and the results presented in this chapter are from two sources: national health surveys and the National Stroke Audit. Data from national health surveys come from questionnaires applied to representative samples of the population of interest. The National Stroke Audit dataset utilises routinely gathered data from over 200 GP practices around the country, and provides data on the prevalence of both stroke and transient ischaemic attack.