How to treat acute stroke

When a person loses perfusion in the vascular territory of the brain it ends up with ischemia and a loss of neurologic functions. A person who experiences an onset of neurologic deficits like weakness, sensory deficit or difficulties with language is most likely to get a stroke. Ischemic strokes have a group of causes like thrombosis, embolism and hyperfusion while hemorrhagic strokes on the other hand do not. They can be intraparenchymal or subarachnoid. Until the recent years this disease did not have a good outcome. New era of care for the stroke did not begin until 1995.

Mechanisms of stroke

Embolic strokesThere are only two origins from which emboli may come from and they are cardiac or arterial. Some of the sources of cardiac emboli are native valvular disease, recent myocardial infarction, artial fibrillation and dialted cardiomyopathy. Arterial sources are either atherothrombolic or cholesterol emboli that get created in the arch of the aorta and in the extracranial arteries. These strokes happen without a warning.

Thrombotic strokesSome of the things that influence the showing up of this stroke are injury to and loss of endothelial cells exposing the subendothelium and platelet activation by the subendothelium. Deficiency of protein C and protein S can also lead to a thrombotic stroke but usually in patients that are not that old.

Lacunar stroke20% of all ischemic strokes are lacunar strokes. Microatheroma, lipohyalinosis, fibrinoid necrosis secondary to either hypertension or vasculitis can lead to a lacunar stroke, however, it is usually the hypertension.

Frequency

Every year in the United States 795,000 people suffer from a stroke. According to some researches, 625,000 of them are ischemic. A certain study says that by the year of 2025 1 million of the US citizens will suffer from a stroke every year. At this moment, there are 4.4 million people who survived a stroke. In Europe, stroke is the leading cause of death. The number of people that may die from a stroke will only rise with the oncoming years. In all of the world, 15 million people suffer from a stroke and only a third of that number survives. One third dies while the remaining 5 million people remain disabled.

Mortality

After the cardiac and cancer-caused deaths, stroke is in the third place of death causes in the United States. However, stroke is in the first place when it comes to disability causes. The United States have spent over $68 billion dollars because of stroke in the year of 2009.

Race

Black population in America is more threatened by stroke than the white population. When it comes to sex, men suffer from stroke more than women. The ratio is 3:2. However, this research only includes people under the age of 60. When age is considered, people over the age of 64 make for the 75% of all stroke cases.

Treatment

A person who suffers from a stroke will first be healed in the hospital and then he or she will have to follow a rehabilitation program at home.