Laboratory tests as short-term correlates of stroke

BACKGROUND: The widespread adoption of electronic health records provides new opportunities to better predict which patients are likely to suffer a stroke. Using electronic health records, we assessed the correlation of different laboratory tests to future occurrences of a stroke. METHODS: We examined the electronic health records of 2.4 million people over a two year time span. These records contained 26,964 diagnoses of stroke. Using Cox regression analysis, we measured whether any one of 1796 different laboratory tests were effectively correlated with a future diagnosis of stroke. RESULTS: We identified 38 different laboratory tests that had significant short-term (two year) prognostic value for a future diagnosis of stroke. For each of the 38 laboratory tests we also compiled the Kaplan-Meier survival curve, and relative risk ratio that the test confers. CONCLUSION: Several dozen laboratory tests are effective short-term correlates of stroke. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12883-016-0619-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.