To test the hypothesis that the prevalence of cervical artery dissection remains constant across age groups, we evaluated the relationship between age and cervical artery dissection in patients with stroke using a nationally representative sample from the United States.

We used inpatient claims data included in the 2012–2015 releases of the National Inpatient Sample (NIS). We used validated ICD-9-CM codes to identify adults hospitalized with ischemic stroke and a concomitant diagnosis of carotid or vertebral artery dissection. Survey weights provided by the NIS and population estimates from the US census were used to calculate nationally representative estimates. The χ² test for trend was used to compare the prevalence of concomitant dissection among stroke hospitalizations across patient subgroups defined by age. Poisson regression and the Wald test for trend were used to evaluate whether the prevalence of hospitalizations for stroke and concomitant dissection per million person-years varied by age groups.

There were 17,320 (95% confidence interval [CI], 15,614–19,026) hospitalizations involving ischemic stroke and a concomitant dissection. The prevalence of dissection among stroke hospitalizations decreased across 10-year age groups from 7.2% (95% CI, 6.2%–8.1%) among persons younger than 30 years to 0.2% (95% CI, 0.1%–0.2%) among persons older than 80 years (p value for trend <0.001). However, the prevalence of hospitalizations for stroke and concomitant dissection increased from 5.4 (95% CI, 4.6–6.2) hospitalizations per million person-years among adults younger than 30 to 24.4 (95% CI, 21.0–27.9) hospitalizations per million person-years among adults older than age 80 (p value for trend <0.01).

In a nationally representative sample, the prevalence of hospitalizations for dissection-related stroke increased with age.