Cerebrovascular disease in South Asia – Part II: Risk factors and prevention

In South Asian countries, conventional vascular risk factors like hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiac disease, smoking, obesity, atrial fibrillation are the dominant ones, while other aetiologies like rheumatic heart disease, infective meningitis-related infarcts and postpartum cerebral venous thrombosis also constitute a big fraction. This review discusses the evidence of prevalence of various risk factors in South Asian countries and possible measures to combat the rising burden of cerebrovascular disease. The last part of the review discusses prevention and identification of risk factors that are unique to or especially found in patient population of South Asia.