Between January 1989 and July 1992, 120 patients were seen at the Marmara University School of Medicine, Neurology Department with the diagnosis of stroke. Of those 47 were women and 73 were men with a mean age 59.6 (age 29 to 87). The types of stroke were found to be: intracerebral bleeding (16.7%), transient ischemic attack (TIA) (13.8%), large vessel infarction (48.3%) and lacunar infarction (16.7%). The majority of intracerebral bleedings were of hypertensive type (64.7%), the rest being of cerebral amyloid angiopathy type (35.3%). The infarcts were thrombotic (72.4%) or embolic (27.6%) in etiology. In 75.9% of cases the infarcts were located in the territory of middle cerebral artery (MCA) while the anterior cerebral artery and vertebrobasilar system territory were affected in 20.6% and 3.5% respectively.The most frequently encountered risk factor was hypertension (68.3%) followed by heart diseases (49%); hiperlipidemia (40.8%); smoking (26.7%); diabetes (23.4%); obesity (5.8%). Apart from those 4 patients were diagnosed as having moyamoya disease, protein-C deficiency, infarction due to cocam-related thrombosis and fibromuscular dysplasia. Three patients were found to have primary antiphospholipid antibody syndrome. One patient had vasculitis due to tuberculous meningitis.