Damn, our stroke medical professionals can't get prevention out of their thought processes. How do you prevent those deaths once the stroke has started? That thought process would require some smarts and intellectual capital. Maybe by stopping the neuronal cascade of death by these 5 causes. This whole issue wouldn't come up if we had any sort of stroke strategy. This puts the complete work of stroke death prevention on the public rather than keeping the responsibility on our stroke medical professionals where it belongs. Denying and shifting responsibility, that is not the property of true leaders.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=164529&CultureCode=en
Middle aged African-Americans are more likely to die of stroke than
are whites, not because of differences in care after stroke, but because
blacks are having more strokes. Researchers suggest greater prevention
efforts aimed at younger African-Americans are needed to raise awareness
of early stroke risk and contributing factors.
Forty-five year-old African-Americans are more likely to die of
stroke than are whites, not because of differences in care, but because
blacks are having more strokes, according to new research in the
American Heart Association’s Journal Stroke.
Few studies have examined whether the elevated stroke rate in blacks
explains why there are more stroke deaths. The REasons for Geographic
And Racial Differences in Stroke(REGARDS) Study investigated why blacks
and U.S. Southerners are more likely to die from stroke. They found the
higher number of stroke deaths is due to a greater number of strokes
occurring at younger ages among blacks.
At age 45, blacks were four times more likely to die of stroke than
their white counterparts in this analysis. By age 85, there was no
difference in stroke death rates among blacks and whites.
“The magnitude of public health burden of the racial disparity in
stroke is staggering, with an estimated 22,384 “extra” stroke events
i.e., above what would be expected relative to rates in whites occurring
in blacks in 2014,” said George Howard, Dr.P.H., study lead author and a
professor of biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham
School of Public Health. “With a life-long cost of stroke of $104,000
for each of the events, this black-white difference in stroke costs
America more than $2.3 billion annually. Obviously, efforts that would
even marginally reduce this burden would pay remarkable dividends for
the U.S.”
He blamed racial differences in the development and control of risk factors and encouraged more aggressive prevention efforts.
“We need to do more to focus on prevention and control of risk
factors before they result in a stroke. Unfortunately, most of the
research resources are focused on treating stroke patients and
preventing recurrent stroke.”
Researchers said prevention efforts addressing risk factors like high
blood pressure and diabetes that are more common in African-Americans
are at the root of the problem; and to reduce the disparity in stroke we
must “go further upstream” to make inroads on racial differences in the
traditional and non-traditional risk factors that lead to stroke.
Researchers analyzed data on 29,681 people selected at random from
across the United States. Conducted between 2003 and 2007, REGARDS used a
combination of mail and telephone interviews to assess risk factors,
followed by regular in-home visits to collect other biological samples
and measure blood pressure, height, and waist circumference.
The pattern of stroke mortality they found in their study data
mirrors national data, where the black-to-white hazard ratio for dying
from a stroke is about 4.0 at age 45 but falls to just 1.0 by age 85.
The researchers found that the risk of having a stroke followed a
remarkably similar pattern; however, there were no black-white
differences in the risk of dying once a stroke occurred.
Co-authors are Claudia S. Moy, Ph.D.; Virginia J. Howard, Ph.D.;
Leslie A. McClure, Ph.D.; Dawn O. Kleindorfer, M.D.; Brett M. Kissela,
M.D.; Suzanne E. Judd, Ph.D.; Fredrick W. Unverzagt, Ph.D.; Elsayed Z.
Soliman, M.D.; M. Safford, M.D.; Mary Cushman, M.D.; Matthew L.
Flaherty, M.D. and Virginia G. Wadley, Ph.D. Author disclosures are on
the manuscript.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke funded the study.
http://newsroom.heart.org/news/prevention-is-key-to-closing-racial-disparity-gap-in-stroke?preview=f49415120fc2632d90b07963b1189ac0
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