“Knowledge is power,” says Dr. Natalia Rost, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Acute Stroke Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. “If you know that a particular risk factor is sabotaging your health and predisposing you to a higher risk of stroke, you can take steps to alleviate the effects of that risk.”
Nearly 800,000 Americans have strokes a year, and about 610,000 of them are first strokes. Unfortunately, 160,000 patients die a year of complications, making strokes the third-leading killer in the U.S. What is this killer of so many Americans?
“Brain Attacks”
Most experts would now like the public to think of strokes as “brain attacks.” Blood and oxygen delivery is disrupted on its way to the brain. The longer a brain is starved of nutrients and oxygen, the worse the outcome for the stroke survivor.
Ischemic strokes involve blood vessel blockages in the neck or head. These are the most frequent types of strokes, coming in at 80 percent of all occurrences. Brain cells die without blood flow and vital oxygen. There are three different types of clots – thrombosis, a clot in the neck or head’s blood vessel; stenosis, severe narrowing of an artery in or leading to the brain; and embolism, movement of a clot from one part of the body to the other.
Hemorrhagic stroke occurs with bleeding into the brain or spaces surrounding it.