Time: The huge game changer for treatment of stroke, a podcast

Great conscience laundering, ignoring all this still needing solutions in stroke.

All the failures here in one list; My nihilism list;

1. 30% get spasticity NOTHING THAT WILL CURE IT.

2. At least half of all stroke survivors experience fatigue Or is it 70%?

Or is it 40%?

NOTHING THAT WILL CURE IT.

3. Over half of stroke patients have attention problems.

NOTHING THAT WILL CURE IT.

4.  The incidence of constipation was 48%.

NO PROTOCOLS THAT WILL CURE IT.

5. No EXACT stroke protocols that address any of your muscle limitations.

6. Poststroke depression(33% chance)

NO PROTOCOLS THAT WILL ADDRESS IT. 

7.  Poststroke anxiety(20% chance) NO PROTOCOLS THAT WILL ADDRESS IT. 

8. Posttraumatic stress disorder(23% chance)  NO PROTOCOLS THAT WILL ADDRESS IT.

  9.  12% tPA efficacy for full recovery NO ONE IS WORKING ON SOMETHING BETTER.

10.  10% seizures post stroke NO PROTOCOLS THAT WILL ADDRESS IT. 

11. 21% of patients had developed cachexia NO PROTOCOLS THAT WILL ADDRESS IT. 

 

12. You lost 5 cognitive years from your stroke  NO PROTOCOLS THAT WILL ADDRESS IT.

13.  33% dementia chance post-stroke from an Australian study?

       Or is it 17-66%?

       Or is it 20% chance in this research?

NO PROTOCOLS THAT WILL ADDRESS THIS

 

 But the wonderful chest thumping here, hope you never have to deal with stroke aftermath.

Time: The huge game changer for treatment of stroke, a podcast

Paul CostelloPublished on May 7, 2019

When the TV heartthrob, Luke Perry, of "Beverly Hills, 90210" fame, died of a stroke in March, it was a surprise to many people. How could someone so young, only 52 years old, die of an old person's ailment?
But, as Stanford neurologist Greg Albers told me in this 1:2:1 podcast, age is one of the myths of stroke: "You can have stroke at any age. We have children who have strokes, adolescents, young adults. It's most common in the elderly but strokes can hit at any age."
Albers, director of the Stanford Stroke Center, has been working to understand the mechanisms governing strokes for nearly 30 years. Thanks to that dogged work, Albers hit gold in 2018 with the release of data from a large multisite clinical trial, DEFUSE 3. 
Previously, it was thought that if a patient wasn't treated within a few hours of their stroke, it was hopeless. Tissue would have deteriorated to the point of no return, which all too often resulted in death or long-term nursing care. While the advance of the drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) in the mid 1980's expanded the treatment window up to three hours, the drug was hardly a panacea and it didn't work for the majority of stroke patients, Albers told me.

In this 1:2:1 podcast, host Paul Costello discusses the latest in stroke research with stroke specialist Greg Albers.

The DEFUSE 3 trial opened a whole new world of possibilities. Stroke treatment could take place up to 24 hours after the stroke and it could, as Albers explained, reap huge benefits. Moreover, on the day that Albers presented the data from DEFUSE 3 at the International Stroke Conference, the American Stroke Association recognized the breakthrough by simultaneously releasing new guidelines that changed the stroke treatment window from 6 to 24 hours.
As Albers explains:

...we're talking about a 50 percent reduction in death or nursing home existence for treatable stroke patients and a threefold increase in functional recovery. In other words, three times as many people being able to go back to do everything that they did before their stroke and half as many patients winding up in a nursing home or dying.

During Stroke Awareness Month, here are key facts about stroke:

• According to the National Stroke Association, each year nearly 800,000 people experience a new or recurrent stroke.
• Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability in the U.S.
• Strokes can happen to anyone at any age, including teenagers, children, newborns and unborn babies.
• Although it is the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S., up to 80 percent of strokes are preventable.

Much of the research advancing the understanding and treatment of stroke has taken place at Stanford helmed by Albers and his colleagues. During our conversation, he put the work into context:

I consider this the most exciting time in stroke research because for the last two decades since we've had the approval of tPA, there have been no therapeutic advances other than a catheter technique to pull the blood clot out. People were convinced that six hours was as far as you could go. Now, with DEFUSE 3 and treatment opening up to 24 hours, people now believe the stroke evolution is highly individualistic. 
It's hard to see so many people who are disabled by stroke, paralyzed, unable to speak, and to realize that we can make a huge difference in their lives. This is why you become a physician, to try to be able to do this type of research and have this type of impact.

(But you are still leaving 90% of stroke survivors with some disability. I still see stroke as a complete failure. You only get partial credit for this success.)