Mild Strokes Are Mild Only in Name
Too many people ignore symptoms, experts say
 (HealthDay News) -- They may be called minor strokes, but they appear to be a major health concern.
Researchers have found that a surprisingly high number of Americans suffer "whispering" strokes -- attacks that are often ignored but that can cause physical and mental damage.
"What we are trying to say to the lay public and primary care physicians is that these strokes are a major public health problem," lead researcher George Howard, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, told HealthDay .
According to the National Stroke Association, a stroke occurs when a blood clot blocks an artery or a blood vessel breaks, interrupting blood flow to the brain. Brain cells begin to die, causing brain damage.
When brain cells die during a stroke, abilities controlled by that area of the brain are lost. Those abilities can include speech, movement and memory. How an individual is affected by a stroke depends on where the stroke occurs in the brain and how much the brain is damaged.
Surgery, medication, hospital care and rehabilitation are all treatments for stroke, but experts agree that the key to recovery is getting medical help fast.
Howard and his colleagues had asked participants in their study to complete questionnaires on mental and physical status. They also asked if participants had experienced symptoms of a stroke, such as:
- Sudden numbness or weakness of the face arm or leg, especially on one side of the body
- Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
- Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
- Sudden severe headache with no known cause.
- Sudden trouble walking, dizziness or loss of balance or coordination.
About 18 percent of the almost 22,000 adults in the study said they'd experienced some of the symptoms. The researchers found that people who'd had symptoms had lower-than-normal scores on physical- and mental-function tests.
More than 3,400 people said they'd had the symptoms but had not been diagnosed with a stroke or a transient ischemic attack, which is called a mini-stroke.
"They didn't think the symptoms important enough to go to a doctor, or the doctor didn't think them important enough to warrant treatment," Howard said.
However, damage was done, the researchers said. These participants' scores were 5.5 points lower for physical functioning and 2.7 points lower for mental functioning than the scores of people who'd had no symptoms.
The situation described by the study is not new in medicine, said Dr. E. Steve Roach, a professor of neurology and pediatrics at Ohio State University and a spokesman for the American Heart Association.
But the high incidence of what has been called "silent stroke" and what Howard's group referred to as a "whispering stroke" carries a clear message, he said.
"The reason they are emphasizing this finding is to get the word out that if people have symptoms like these, they just shouldn't ignore it," Roach said.
On the Web
Learn more about the warning signs of stroke, and what to do about them, by visiting the American Heart Association.
SOURCES:
HealthDay News ; George Howard, Dr.P.H., professor of biostatistics, University of Alabama at Birmingham; E. Steve Roach, M.D., professor of neurology and pediatrics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio; Aug. 3, 2007, Stroke ; National Stroke Association (www.stroke.org)
Author:
Anne Thompson
Publication date:
July 31, 2008
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