Long-term stroke risk - stroke prevention must continue

You can't give up stroke prevention - even in the long run.

Some recent research showing that young women are at risk long after a stroke long after an initial stroke:

The study is among the first to examine long-term outcomes in younger women who are heart attack or stroke survivors, co-author Bob Siegerink, PhD, of Leiden and the Center for Stroke Research Berlin, told MedPage Today in an email exchange.

"The results show that the risk of both fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events persist over a long time," Siegerink wrote. "But next to this, the increase in risk can be characterized as 'true to type', which means that the risk of cerebrovascular events was highest in ischemic stroke patients, whereas the risk of cardiac events was highest in MI patients."

This observation suggests that the mechanisms leading to recurrence are disease specific, he added.