You better start asking now, you don't want to get to the emergency room and find out the doctors don't know anything about treating blood pressuse during your stroke and the immediate aftermath.
Otherwise you are just letting your doctor kill your neurons by omission. The Joint Commission should be doing this if they were any good.
http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/44/9/2434.abstract.html?etoc
Systolic Blood Pressure During Acute Stroke Is Associated With Functional Status and Long-term Mortality in the Elderly
- Avraham Weiss, MD*;
- Yichayaou Beloosesky, MD*;
- Ron S. Kenett, PhD;
- Ehud Grossman, MD
+ Author Affiliations- Correspondence to Ehud Grossman, MD, Department of Internal Medicine D and Hypertension Unit, The Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer 52621 Israel. E-mail grosse@post.tau.ac.il
- ↵* Drs Weiss and Beloosesky contributed equally.
Abstract
Background and Purpose—The prognostic value of blood pressure (BP) levels during acute stroke has not been adequately studied. Most studies do not use continuous BP measurements, and patients are followed only for a short period. We designed a study to assess, with 24-hour BP monitoring (24H BPM), the impact of BP levels during the first day of stroke, on the short-term functional status and long-term mortality in elderly patients.Methods—We studied 177 patients with acute stroke (89 men), mean age 84±6 years. BP was measured on admission and 24H BPM was recorded within 24 hours of admission. After 7 days, patients were assessed for functional status according to the modified Rankin Scale and were subsequently followed up for mortality ≤5 years (mean, 2.07±1.48).Results—After 7 days, functional status improved and modified Rankin Scale decreased from 4.2 to 3.7. Follow-up analysis disclosed that 71 patients (27 men and 44 women) had died. Mortality rate was higher in women (50% versus 30%; P<0.01) and in patients with a history of congestive heart failure. Only average systolic BP, recorded by 24H BPM, predicted short-term functional status and long-term mortality. Cox proportional hazards model analysis demonstrated that age, sex, congestive heart failure, and average systolic BP >160 mm Hg, recorded by 24H BPM, were associated with increased mortality.Conclusions—High systolic BP recorded by 24H BPM on the first day of stroke was found to be associated with unfavorable short-term functional status and long-term mortality in elderly patients.
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