Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Life-Shortening Impact Of Transient Ischemic Attack

From my MRI it looked like I had some earlier small infarcts, so I wonder if they were silent TIAs.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/237487.php
Having a transient ischemic attack (TIA), or "mini stroke," can reduce your life expectancy by 20 percent, according to a new study in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

"People experiencing a TIA won't die from it, but they will have a high risk of early stroke and also an increased risk of future problems that may reduce life expectancy," said Melina Gattellari, Ph.D., senior lecturer at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine in The University of New South Wales, Sydney and Ingham Institute in Liverpool, Australia.

"Our findings suggest that patients and doctors should be careful to intensely manage lifestyle and medical risk factors for years after a transient ischemic attack."

The statistical analysis is the first to comprehensively quantify the impact of hospital-diagnosed TIA on life expectancy.

Researchers identified 22,157 adults hospitalized with a TIA from July 2000 to June 2007 in New South Wales, Australia, and tracked their medical records for a minimum two years (median 4.1 years). They gathered death registry data for the area through June 2009 and compared death rates in the study population to those in the general population. Median ages were 78 for female patients and 73 for male patients; 23.9 percent were younger than 65 and 19.4 percent were older than 85.

At one year after hospitalization, 91.5 percent of TIA patients were still living, compared to 95 percent expected survival in the general population. At five years, survival of TIA patients was 13.2 percent lower than expected -- 67.2 percent were still alive, compared to an expected survival of 77.4 percent.

By the end of the study, at the nine-year mark, survival of TIA patients was 20 percent lower than expected.

Increasing age was associated with an increasing risk of death compared to the matched population. TIA had only minimal effect on patients younger than 50, but significantly reduced life expectancy in those older than 65. Compared to patients younger than 50, relative risk of death for patients 75-84 was 7.77 times higher and 11.02 times higher for those 85 and older.

"We thought the reverse may be true -- that survival rates in older TIA patients would be more like other older people, who, although not affected by TIA, are affected by other conditions that may influence their survival," Gattellari said. "But even a distant history of TIA is major determinant of prognosis; certainly, the risks faced by TIA patients go well beyond their early stroke risk."

Researchers also examined TIA patients' medical records for other common health risks:
  • Congestive heart failure was associated with 3.3 times more risk of dying.
  • Atrial fibrillation was associated with twice the risk of dying.
  • Prior hospitalization for stroke meant 2.63 times the risk of dying compared to patients without it; further, this effect grew over time, peaking at 5.01 times more risk three years after TIA admission.
In general, adults with a history of TIA can maximize their chances of living a long life by adopting healthy lifestyle habits, such as exercising daily, maintaining a healthy weight, quitting smoking and eating healthy, Gattellari said.

No comments:

Post a Comment