Deans' stroke musings: Noninvasive, wearable device feasible for determining stroke risk

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.

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Noninvasive, wearable device feasible for determining stroke risk

But what the fuck is the next step that will PREVENT THAT STROKE? THAT IS THE RESEARCH NEEDED! WHOM WILL DO THAT RESEARCH?

I'd have to say this is pretty much worthless without follow-up prevention research!

Noninvasive, wearable device feasible for determining stroke risk

Key takeaways:

Participants underwent a breath-holding exercise and imaging of blood flow.
The low-risk stroke group had a higher increase of brain volume; the high-risk group had greater increase in blood flow rate.

Noninvasive speckle contrast optical spectroscopy may be a feasible method for determining whether individuals are at high or low risk for stroke, according to a study published in Biomedical Optics Express.

“If we can build a brain stress test equivalent that is scalable, affordable and noninvasive, that would make a massive contribution to public health,” Charles Liu, MD, PhD, co-senior study author and professor of clinical neurological surgery at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, said in a related release.

brain scan — According to joint research from Caltech and USC, a non-invasive tool to measure blood flow and volume may be feasible for determining stroke risk. Image: Adobe Stock

Liu and colleagues sought to advance a novel, noninvasive method to assess stroke risk through speckle contrast optical spectroscopy (SCOS), which monitors regional changes in blood flow and volume of the brain during breath holding.

Their proof-of-concept study recruited participants from the California Institute of Technology as well as the greater Los Angeles area, including 53 adults who were comfortable with breath holding and without major respiratory disease. All participants were required to wear a noninvasive SCOS device, which utilized a single-mode continuous wave laser diode able to deliver up to 200 megawatts (mW) of current.

The final analysis included 160 breath-holding events logged by 50 individuals, divided into two equal low- and high-risk groups, whose evaluations were made via the Cleveland Clinic Stroke Risk Calculator. The high-risk group was further divided into subgroups based on scores.

Prior to treatment, all participants were required to complete a health-related questionnaire and had their blood pressure taken. During treatment, the device was placed on the forehead, 5 mm from the skin, with illumination power set to 45mW and a camera taking pictures at 60 frames per second with recording of blood cells as they flow through the brain in 12-bit images. Total time for the procedure, where the individual was asked to remain still and to avoid head movement, was 180 seconds: 60 seconds of normal breathing, then voluntary breath holding for a time determined by the comfort of the participant, then recovery followed by normal respiration.

According to the results, individuals from the high-risk cohort demonstrated a greater increase in brain blood volume and lower increase of blood flow (P = 0.014) when holding their breath compared with the low-risk group.

Additionally, Liu and colleagues reported a statistically significant difference between groups when comparing blood flow or blood volume change, with those deemed low risk showing a higher increase of brain volume and those deemed high risk showing greater increase in rate of blood flow.

“Due to the portability and cost-effectiveness of the compact SCOS device, we would like to underscore the potential of deploying the device and incorporating the breath-holding maneuver in various geographical settings,” Liu and colleagues wrote.