ISC 2026 | The disparity in stroke prognosis between males and females

Worldwide, stroke is more common in males than females. However, the prognosis in females is worse than in males. This paradox is interesting for many authors, and in Egypt we investigated that and found that there is that female taking a longer time from symptom onset to reaching a stroke-ready hospital than males. It was a statistically significant difference, which means that there is a longer pre-hospital delay for women. They take more time to reach a hospital, and they’re reaching the hospital outside the therapeutic time window, which leads to them missing treatment, either intravenous thrombolysis or mechanical thrombectomy. The most common cause behind this is misdiagnosis because a stroke is sometimes presented with an atypical presentation in females in comparison to males. The type of health-seeking behaviors in females, they tend to call relatives, family members, friends, rather than emergency medical services. All these factors are leading to more delay among females in comparison to males in Egypt. In the hospital, women and men think that sometimes there is no difference between males and females in the hospital, but all the problems are in the pre-hospital delay. So I think we are needing a targeted public stroke awareness campaign toward females and more training for doctors to train them how to diagnose a stroke, especially when presented with atypical stroke presentations among females.

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