Prompt stroke therapy will cut disease burden

I know this is in Britain but it would be the same for every country. The bolded second paragraph is really depressing.
http://www.onmedica.com/newsarticle.aspx?id=6851a46f-5b40-4c7b-b97f-60f8b1660305
Friday, 13 May 2011
The huge burden of stroke will continue to rise over the next two decades as populations age, unless greater improvements are made in prevention, warn researchers today in The Lancet. They say that direct costs of treating stroke in the UK alone are about £9m, with “immense” indirect costs resulting from stroke-related dementia, depression, falls fractures and epilepsy.

A second paper in The Lancet points out the large evidence gaps that remain regarding stroke rehabilitation, even though improvements have occurred over the past 20 years.
Professor Peter M. Rothwell from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and his colleagues say in the first paper that primary prevention of stroke is the most important element of reducing stroke burden. But they stress the importance of secondary prevention, because effective intervention can more than halve the risk of recurrent strokes – which represent about a third of all strokes, and are usually more severe and more likely to result in dementia than the first stroke or transient ischaemic attack (TIA).

They write: “Secondary prevention with antiplatelet agents, antihypertensives, statins and anticoagulation, and carotid endarterectomy as appropriate should be initiated urgently after TIA or minor stroke because of the high risks of early stroke recurrence.”

They say that aspirin plus dipyridamole or clopidogrel are usually recommended as the first-line approach after cerebral ischaemia of arterial origin, which make up about 80% of ischaemic strokes. The other 20% are caused by embolism from atrial fibrillation, for which new treatments such as factor Xa and thrombin inhibitors may take over from vitamin K antagonists as the current standard.

They add that patients who have had either type of ischaemic stroke can lower their risk of recurrence by about 20% by taking drugs to lower lipids and blood pressure.