Monday, April 25, 2011

How many neurons did you lose during your stroke?

I have to look again at my medical records.
Within an hour of getting to the hospital I got tPA. It looks like I had 90 minutes from onset to tPA.
So lost neurons = 171 million
lost synapses = 1260 billion
lost mylinated fibers = 675 miles
Lost 5.4 years in brain age.

In each minute, 1.9 million neurons, 14 billion synapses, and 12 km (7.5 miles) of myelinated fibers are destroyed. Compared with the normal rate of neuron loss in brain aging, the ischemic brain ages 3.6 years each hour without treatment.
It has been estimated that the adult brain has around one hundred billion neurons and an even larger number of glial cells.
And with the one neuron handling functions I should be able to handle that minute loss: http://oc1dean.blogspot.com/2011/04/single-neuron-power.html

This is something our doctors should be keeping track of, it would be a much better way of describing damage rather than mild, severe, catastrophic.
Someday this will be correlated with a 3d MRI and cubic volume of the stroke.
Considering my damage, my penumbra(partially damaged area) was also 171 million neurons. With that small a percentage dead and damaged I wonder why I was so close to dying.

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