Objective  To explore the risk factors of aspiration during hospitalization in patients with ischemic stroke (IS) and establish a predictive model.

Methods  Based on the case-control design, clinical materials of 316 IS patients treated in the Department of Neurology of Suzhou Ninth Hospital Affiliated to Soochow University from March 2022 to October 2023 were retrospectively collected. According to incidence of aspiration during hospitalization, the patients were divided into case group with 89 cases (aspiration occurred during hospitalization) and control group with 227 cases (no aspiration occurred during hospitalization). Univariate and multivariate Logistic regression analyses were performed in both groups to screen out the risk factors of aspiration during hospitalization in IS patients. R software was used to extract 70 % of the data from the two groups as the training set (establishing a Nomogram model), and the remaining 30 % data was used as test set. Value of predictive model was evaluated by area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, calibration curve, and decision curve.

Results  There were significant differences in the terms of age, the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score, number of lesions, homocysteine (Hcy) level, spontaneous cough, and grading of Wada drinking water test between the case group and the control group (P < 0.05). Multivariate Logistic analysis showed that large age (OR=2.201, 95 %CI, 1.254 to 3.865), high NIHSS score (OR=4.816, 95 %CI, 1.652 to 14.041), multiple lesions (OR=2.649, 95 %CI, 1.249 to 5.613), high level of Hcy (OR=1.501, 95 %CI, 1.044 to 2.158), weakened or absent spontaneous cough (OR=3.384, 95 %CI, 1.639 to 6.987), and high grading of Wada drinking water test (OR=2.878, 95 %CI, 1.422 to 5.783) were the risk factors of aspiration during hospitalization in IS patients (P < 0.05). In the training set, the AUC of the Nomogram model for predicting aspiration during hospitalization in IS patients was 0.872 (95 %CI, 0.827 to 0.919), and was 0.859 (95 %CI, 0.807 to 0.904) in the test set. The calibration curve analysis showed that P value was 0.869 in the training set and 0.898 in the test set. The decision curve analysis for both the training set and test set showed that the Nomogram model was of good clinical applicability.

Conclusion  The risk of aspiration during hospitalization in IS patients is related to large age, high NIHSS score, multiple lesions, high level of Hcy, weakened or absent spontaneous cough, and high grading of Wada drinking water test. The Nomogram predictive model established on these factors can effectively evaluate the risk of aspiration during hospitalization in IS patients.