Every 53 seconds, someone in America has a stroke. Every 3.3 minutes, someone dies of one.
Stroke is a leading cause of serious, long-term disability in the United States.
About 4,500,000 stroke survivors are alive today. Data from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's Frammingham Heart Study, show that about 600,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year. About 500,000 of these are first attacks. In 1996 females accounted for 61.4 percent of stroke fatalities. Estimates are that stroke accounts for half of all patients hospitalized for acute neurological disease.