Association between stroke and patients with pelvic inflammatory disease: a nationwide population-based study in Taiwan.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to estimate the risk of stroke in a 3-year period after pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) using a nationwide population-based study.

METHODS: Our study cohort consisted of all patients with a diagnosis of PID (N = 64,515) between 2004 and 2005 with a control cohort (1:2) of age-matched controls (N = 129, 030). Each patient was tracked from hospitalization until the end of 2006. Cox regressions were performed to compute the 3-year stroke-free survival rates after adjusting for possible confounding factors.

RESULTS: We found that women with PID were more likely to have strokes than the control population. After adjusting for potential confounding factors, the adjusted hazard ratio of stroke was 1.63 (95% CI, 1.45-1.85) for PID patients as compared to the general population cohort. Sensitivity analysis using a bootstrap approach further ensured the validity of the results of our study.

CONCLUSIONS: We concluded that patients with PID have an association with stroke. Further research is necessary to investigate the pathophysiology between PID and stroke.