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.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Climbers Face Lasting Effects if Brain Swells

I did have nausea when I climbed to the top of Mauna Loa in Hawaii at 13,678 feet, but nothing when I got to the top of Galdhøpiggen in Norway at  8100 feet. If this applies to you see your doctor for answers.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/RSNA/36195
Extreme mountaineers who develop serious brain swelling at altitude appear to have lasting evidence of small hemorrhages in their brains, researchers said here.
In a single-center MRI study of 36 mountaineers, patients who'd had high altitude cerebral edema (HACE) had microbleeds in their corpus callosum, while those with other forms of altitude sickness largely did not, Michael Knauth, MD, PhD, of the University Medical Center Goettingen in Germany, and colleagues reported during a press briefing at the Radiological Society of North America meeting here.
"Microbleeds were found almost exclusively in the brains of HACE survivors," Knauth said during the briefing.
HACE typically occurs at altitudes above 7,000 feet and is considered the end stage of severe acute mountain sickness, or altitude sickness.
It's long been thought to be a fully reversible condition if the patient survives, but some work suggests that it does leave traces in the brain – particularly, hemosiderin deposits, or remnants of microbleeds.
These can be picked up on a very sensitive form of MRI called susceptibility-weighted imaging, Knauth said. So he and colleagues conducted these scans on 36 mountaineers, some of whom had experienced various illnesses:
  • 10 had HACE
  • 11 had severe acute mountain sickness
  • 8 had high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE)
  • 7 had been at altitudes above 7,000 feet but had no altitude sickness
Radiologists interpreting the scans were blinded to the climber's status, and classified each as positive, negative, or questionable for microbleeds.
Overall, Knauth and colleagues found that the microbleeds in the corpus callosum occurred almost exclusively in climbers who'd had HACE -- 8 of the 10 of these mountaineers had definite evidence of microbleeds, while two had "questionable" bleeds.
Only one patient with severe acute mountain sickness also showed evidence of microbleeds, the lone false-positive result, Knauth said.
There was one questionable finding in a patient who'd had HAPE and two questionable findings in those who'd been at altitude without becoming ill.
Knauth said the HACE patients who had been most severely affected showed the most prominent evidence of microbleeds, and he cautioned that the findings don't appear to be a function of altitude as much as severity.
"It's not like you can say that at 8,000 [feet] they'll have so many [microbleeds] and at Everest they'll have double," Knauth said. "But those who have the most severe HACE – the ones that almost died -- have the most severe changes on MRI as well."
He also warned that there don't appear to be many clinical effects of the microbleeds at this point in time – though longer-term effects may be a different story.
"The neuropsychological consequences are unclear, but at the present there are no data to support the hypothesis that they are impaired," he said. "They work normally, but subtle testing of their mental capabilities is still to be performed. But it probably [will show] nothing."
Knauth concluded that the findings counter the idea that HACE is fully reversible, given that this evidence of microbleeds remains for years after the initial injury.

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