Mortality from Cerebrovascular Accidents and Hypertension in the Republic of Ireland

It is well known that hypertension may be associated with certain cerebrovascular accidents on the one hand, and with coronary heart disease on the other. The fact that two diseases tend to occur together in one patient, however, does not necessarily mean that they are similar in their epidemiology or mortality. A study of the mortality from coronary artery disease in the Republic of Ireland over the past 30 years has recently been published from this department (Acheson and Thornton, 1958), and it was felt that it might be instructive to undertake similar analyses of the vital statistics of the Republic for hypertension and cerebrovascular accidents and to compare them with those already published for coronary artery disease. Although it is recognized that mortality figures are a poor index of the prevalence of hypertension (W.H.O., 1959), they are probably a fair index of the incidence of cerebrovascular accidents taken as a group.