Doctors favor aggressive therapy for mini-stroke victims

A new study lends credence to the belief that people shouldn’t ignore mini-stroke symptoms even if they go away in mere seconds. In fact, the study says that fast, aggressive action on transient ischemic attacks, or TIAs, could greatly reduce the chance of a serious stroke.

Doctors favor aggressive therapy for mini-stroke victims 0421-Ministroke

Doctors favor aggressive therapy for mini-stroke victims 0421-Ministroke

“You should worry about symptoms even if they last for just a few seconds or a few minutes,” said lead author Dr. Pierre Amarenco of Bichat Hospital in Paris, speaking to FOX News.

According to the researchers, sending a person to the hospital after a “mini-stroke,” even if the muscle weakness or slurring of speech lasted a mere few seconds, could reduce the risk of major strokes by as much as 50 percent. TIAs, after all, are oftentimes a sign that a more serious, possibly fatal stroke may be coming in days, or even a few hours.

“The study showed that the widespread, systematic implementation of specialized TIA units across multiple sites, countries, and continents can make a difference in the care of these patients,” said University of Miami researchers Ralph Sacco and Tatjana Rundek in an editorial accompanying the study.

The researchers based their findings on data from 4,789 patients, as compiled on the international registry TIAregistry.org, which includes follow-up data for as long as five years. And while the study does not include a comparison group, University of Kentucky dean of public health Dr. Donna Arnett, who was not involved in the study, said that it “helps build the evidence base for the importance of getting in for early treatment.”

Data taken from studies conducted from 1999 to 2003 showed that stroke risk goes up to 10 percent two days after mini-stroke symptoms first manifest, and between 12 to 20 percent for the first one to three months after the symptoms were first reported. But if TIAs are treated more aggressively, stroke risk goes down to 1.5 percent at two days, 2.1 percent at a week, 3.7 percent at 90 days, and 5.1 percent at one year. This all represents a huge improvement over the risk if mini-strokes don’t receive fast and aggressive treatment.

“Although this was not a randomized trial and there was no comparison group to assess whether specialized units performed better than non-specialized (stroke) units, these (newly-reported) risks are substantially lower than expected. Outcomes in this study were at least 50 percent lower than those reported in previous studies,” wrote the researchers in a press release.

The research, however, did come with its share of limitations. As admitted by the researchers above, all of the sites that participated were hand-picked, specialized programs, as opposed to random ones. There were also no U.S. sites involved, with almost 50 percent of the subjects hailing from France, Germany, and Spain.

http://www.modernreaders.com/tias-major-strokes/44617/mark-kesler

Doctors favor aggressive therapy for mini-stroke victims

Doctors favor aggressive therapy for mini-stroke victims

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