Battling Heart and Stroke

My husband and I watched “The Namesake” the other day and I remember that scene where the father Ashoke presented himself at the ER and had to stand in line for a long time, leading to his death due to a heart attack. Unfortunately, this scenario does not only happen in movies but in real life as well. In a  CVD news item last week, I cited that the average waiting time in an ER is almost an hour - 60 minutes which can make the difference between recovery and disability, between life and death.

This study reported in the journal Stroke looked at 15,117 stroke victims from 46 hospitals listed in the North Carolina Stroke Registry (January 2005 to April 2008) and the findings are as follows: More →

Having problems with your hearing? Maybe it is time to check your stroke risk.

A nation-wide research study in Taiwan based on health insurance records indicates that sudden loss of hearing might be an early sign of risk to stroke. In fact, this symptom may be able to predict the actual stroke two years before it happens.

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Is there a link between dementia and ministrokes? This seems very likely, according to researchers who conducted studies on several people with dementia or cognitive impairment.

What is dementia?

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When it comes to stroke rates, Europeans are way better off than Americans, according to a Dutch study.

The researchers looked at data from 2004 on 13,667 Americans and 30,120 Europeans from 11 countries. Their analysis shows that American men have 61% higher likelihood of suffering from stroke than their European counterparts. Also, American women were almost twice more likely to suffer from stroke than European women. This difference in stroke rates in the two sides of the Atlantic is most evident among the poor segment of the two regions’ population but less visible among the rich. More →

By Jonathon Hardcastle

Hopefully you never had to endure a situation of someone close to you to suffer from transient ischemic attach (TIA), also known as mini stoke, or from a stroke. In any case, you should be familiar with both kinds of stroke as they both destroy brain tissue and can produce similar long-term effects. But there are important differences in what causes them and in the symptoms that tell you which kind of stroke is happening.

Ischemic Stroke:

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