To investigate the prevalence of ischemic stroke and individual exposure to risk factors in the community residents of Tianjin.

Taking one community as one unit, the study employed cluster sampling to select the permanent residents over 40 years old in Tianjin from November 2013 to December 2015, and collected the demography and the prevalence of ischemic stroke in all participants, as well as the neck vascular ultrasound evaluation of high-risk population and other relevant data. χ² test was used to compare the risk factors of stroke between genders.

A total of 41 058 permanent residents in Tianjin were included in this study. A total of 1203 patients suffered from ischemic stroke, with the prevalence of 2.93% (1203/41 058) and the prevalence of 2.51% after gender and age adjustment . Among Tianjin community residents, the detection rates of hypertension, atrial fibrillation, diabetes, and dyslipidemia were 24.94%, 2.23%, 9.79%, and 5.67%, respectively. Smoking, lack of exercise, and body mass index ＞ 25 kg/m² were present in 19.91%, 28.64%, 28.32% of included participants, respectively. 8.80% of the participants had a family history of stroke. The detection rate of smoking in male was significantly higher than that in female (32.41% vs 9.22%), the detection rates of hypertension, dyslipidemia, inactivity and overweight in women were higher than those in men (25.93% vs 23.79%, 30.32% vs 26.27%, 30.58% vs 25.89%, 29.46% vs 26.79%), and the differences were statistically significant (χ²=5036.493, 6.984, 312.794, 980.215, 40.738; P＜0.001, =0.009, ＜0.001, ＜0.001, =0.001). In the cervical vascular ultrasound evaluation of high-risk groups, a total of 1369 patients (70.86%, 1369/1932) had abnormal cervical vascular ultrasound evaluation, and the most common was carotid bulb plaque formation, accounting for 64.73% (723/1117) of the total count of plaque formation.

The prevalence of ischemic stroke in Tianjin residents was high and the distribution of risk factors was diverse. In the high-risk population of stroke in Tianjin, most of them were present with cervical vascular abnormalities, among which carotid bulbar atherosclerotic plaques were the most common.