AIM: To investigate the economic health evaluation of stroke team on cerebral infarction patients in hospital, and explore the mode of stroke unit suiting for Chinese situation. METHODS: Totally 150 cases of acute cerebral infarction were admitted into the Department of Neurology, the People's Hospital of Yuan from January 2003 to March 2004. All patients were assigned into stroke team or general ward randomly to receive treatment, and the data of the patients of the two groups were compared. The key idea indexes recorded were mortality and hospitalization time and other parameters observed were clinical neurological defects, simple Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA), modified Barthel Index (MBI). All these data, incorporated with cost-effectiveness, were analyzed with SPSS software. RESULTS: The mortality rate was less (p < 0.05) and rehabilitation efficacy was more obvious (p < 0.01) in stroke team than in general ward. The cost were less in stroke team than in general ward when the clinical neurological defects scores were reduced 1 point, FMA and MBI scores improved 1 point, and the cost reduced 736.59, 317.48, 410.05 yuan RMB. But the hospitalization time and medical costs had no significant difference between the two groups (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: For cerebral infarction patients, stroke team is able to decrease the mortality rate, improve the activities in early stage, reduce neurological defects and restore social abilities with fewer expenses. The cost-effectiveness analysis shows that the stroke team is more economic.

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