 |
|
|
|
|
Mini-Stroke Can Mean Major One Within Hours
|
| | | | Related Healthscout Videos | |
|
Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 Clopidogrel and aspirin are both aimed at the clots that can cause a stroke by blocking a brain artery. Statins are drugs such as Crestor, Lipitor and Zocor that lower blood cholesterol levels.
Brain images can illustrate why risk of a recurrence might be highest in the hours after a TIA or minor stroke, Rothwell pointed out. "When we do perfusion [blood flow] brain scans in these patients, we do sometimes find that they have occluded an artery in the brain with a blood clot but the brain is surviving on indirect blood flow from the other vessels," he said. "After a few hours, this indirect blood flow sometimes fails and the affected brain area then dies -- they have a stroke."
Dr. Howard S. Kirshner, vice chairman of neurology and director of the Stroke Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a spokesman for the American Academy of Neurology, agreed that "all of this supports the idea that TIA is a medical emergency, that patients who experience a TIA need to seek medical attention right away."
Text Continues Below
"For the emergency department, TIA patients should not be sent right home but should be kept for observation and tested," he said. "They can be sent home if the tests are negative and they already are started on a secondary stroke prevention regimen."
Dr. Daniel Laskowitz, an associate professor in neurology at Duke University, said that the study is important because it marks a new emphasis on prevention in stroke medicine.
Once a stroke occurs, treatment options are limited, so where the effort needs to go is stroke prevention, Laskowitz said. And this adds to a body of literature that if you have a TIA, you are at very high risk of a stroke."
"A TIA should send a strong warning. It is not something that needs to be seen next week," Laskowitz stressed. "There are clear interventions that we can perform to prevent a stroke. So this has a direct practical application to how we manage stroke.
More information
The American Heart Association has more about symptoms and treatment for TIA.
Page: << Prev | 1 | 2
|
Copyright © 2009 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 6/1/2009
|
|
SOURCES: Peter M. Rothwell, M.D., Ph.D., professor, clinical neurology, University of Oxford, England; Howard S. Kirshner, M.D., vice chairman, neurology, and director, Stroke Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn.; Daniel Laskowitz, M.D., associate professor, neurology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.; June 2, 2009, Neurology
|
.gif)
