| Background and objectives: Making decision to begin, continue, or discontinue the mechanical ventilation in patients with cerebrovascular ischemic events is still an important clinical problem due to the inherent severe prognosis. In addition, theuse of respiratory supportive measures in these patients has been considered and questioned due to various risk factors, the pulmonary complications and high age of the patients. The objective of this study is to evaluate the causes of mechanical ventilation, the factors involved in the prognosis of mechanical ventilation and the outcome of ventilation in stroke patients.Methodology: This is a prospective descriptive-analytical study. The study was performed on 55 patients hospitalized in Tabriz Imam Khomeini Hospital between 2007 and 2008 due to diagnosis of ischemic stroke. From the first day of hospitalization, they underwent mechanical ventilation. The risk factors for the disease, the site of the reported lesion in CT and the causes of mechanical ventilationwere determined and the relationship between the disease prognosis and gender, age, risk factors of disease, ischemic site and causes of mechanical ventilation was investigated.Results: Observations showed that out of 55 patients, 39 patients (70.9%) died, 9 patients (16.4%) survived and separated from ventilator, and 7 patients (12.7%) had a chronic dependency on mechanical ventilation. Among the factors predicted to be associated with prognosis of the disease, the presence or absence of risk factors for the disease(high age 82%, high blood pressure 65%, history of previous stroke 29%, diabetes 21%, atrial fibrillation 21%, smoking 16%, high blood lipid 10%) were the only cases, which showed significant relationship with prognosis of this disease. Gender, site of brain lesion and the reasons for patients' mechanical ventilation did not have a significant relationship with the prognosis of the disease.Conclusion: Despite high mortality (70%) and chronic dependency on ventilator (16%) in patients with acute ischemic stroke with respiratory failure, the use of mechanical ventilation still plays a major role in treating these patients. Planning to control risk factors of this disease can play an important role in the improvement of this bad prognosis. Selection of patients based onfactors involved in prognosis of hospitalization in acute and intensive care units can reduce the high economic burden and number of beds occupied in intensive care units |