Monday, April 29, 2013

How many neurons is your doctor responsible for killing/not saving?

This is over the top but unless you don't want change to occur we have to impress upon the medical world how incompetent they are.
Approximate death rates; Your doctor will know exactly.
In each minute,
1.9 million neurons die
14 billion synapses die
12 km (7.5 miles) of myelinated fibers die
brain ages 3.6 years each hour without treatment
I got to the  hospital in 30 minutes, 60 more minutes until I got tPA, no other treatment at all.  I'll be conservative and estimate that for the next two days that the neuronal cascade of death was proceeding at half the normal rate, and days 3-7 at one quarter rate. A medical person could chime in here with research pointing to death rates of the penumbra during the first week.
Days 2-3
So 1440 minutes a day * 2 * 950000 = 2,736,000,000  or 2.7 billion  dead neurons
  1440 minutes a day *2 * 7,000,000,000 = 20,160,000,000,000     20.2 trillion        dead synapses
1440 * 2 * 6km = 17280 km  dead myelinated fibers
Days 4-7
So 1440 minutes a day * 4 * 475000 = 2,736,000,000  or 2.7 billion dead neurons
  1440 minutes a day *4 * 3,500,000,000 = 20,160,000,000,000 20.2 trillion    dead synapses
1440 * 4 * 3km = 17280 km   dead myelinated fibers
This is one hell of a lot of damage to recover from. Especially since we don't know how to move functions from dead locations to new ones.

Do you want this to change?  Start advocating and being a pain in the ass to everyone associated with this. I totally blame the WSO and the stroke associations.

I challenge anybody to tell me where I'm wrong, with references.
If we had pay for results for neurologists we might get some useful stroke protocols.  

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