Thursday, December 17, 2015

Preventable strokes and treatment - finding answers, saving lives

Photo from Pete via Flickr
I'm sold on stroke prevention. It saves lives and it gives society more resources to battle health problems.

An interesting research take about 'preventable' strokes and treatment:
Three out of four strokes could be avoided, and one in four are "highly avoidable," according to a study assessing stroke preventability. It also found that strokes considered the most treatable were the most preventable.
Those were the findings when a 10-point stroke preventability scale -- incorporating key measures such as treatment for hypertension, high cholesterol, and atrial fibrillation -- was applied to 274 consecutive ischemic stroke patients treated at a single institution. ...
"Our data suggest that the difficulties faced by patients with acute stroke extend far beyond the rather narrow period of emergency stroke treatment," Fisher's group wrote.
"If what could be characterized as a more holistic approach to the problem of stroke is taken, the result is a vast expansion of the window of intervention to include the very stroke prevention efforts that appear to be lacking in so many patients with hyperacute stroke."
Not every stroke can be prevented, but so many can be. One can draw some good common sense from the article above and - perhaps - prevent one.

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