By Gail Larkin
Staten Island Advance
STATEN ISLAND, NY — You’re having lunch with a friend who suddenly stops talking. She is just sitting there staring at you. It seems as if she is trying to speak, but her words are garbled and it looks like she is having trouble moving her mouth to form the words.
A look of fear spreads across her face. You ask her if she’s OK. Within a minute or so, she seems back to her old self. She says she’s alright and just felt a little bit dizzy for a moment.
Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States. It’s also the leading cause of disability each year for thousands of people - 25 percent of whom are under the age of 65.
In this scenario, your friend had a sudden change in level of awareness and difficulty speaking along with a temporary paralysis of some of her facial muscles. Symptoms such as these are often seen with a stroke, but they can also be seen in a condition often called a mini-stroke, also referred to by medical professionals as a transient ischemic attack (TIA).
Just as the name implies, a TIA lasts only a short time - sometimes less than a minute, other times for a few hours. Ischemia simply means inadequate oxygen in the tissues/cells. Often the cause is smaller clots that are moving through the arteries of the brain, but not blocking enough of the blood flow to cause permanent damage. TIAs are often warning signs that a person is at risk for a more serious and debilitating stroke. About one-third of those who have a TIA will have an acute stroke some time in the future.
In this scenario, it would be extremely important for your friend to see her doctor and report the episode right away. Doing so could spare her the tragic development of stroke later on.
What causes a stroke?
Your brain cells, in constant need of oxygen, require healthy blood flow through several arteries. If one of these arteries gets blocked or ruptures, the part of the brain receiving blood from that artery will suddenly become oxygen-starved. Within minutes, the brain cells will begin to malfunction and die. The symptoms will vary depending on what artery is blocked or bleeding. In 80 percent of strokes, the artery becomes blocked by a clot either traveling from the heart or other part of the body, or developing right in the brain’s artery.
Although there is often a defined area of damage within minutes, there is also a larger area around the initial injury that can become more damaged as minutes and hours pass. This is where you, the observer, family member, or even the patient, can help.
Strokes don’t have to cause such disability. While sometimes the stroke may be massive and the majority of the damage sudden and permanent, most of the time there is a window of opportunity for saving most of the brain from injury.
EMT’s and paramedics are trained to recognize the symptoms of stroke and quickly obtain a history of what happened. If the symptoms, for example, started less than two hours before the arrival of emergency care providers, the patient will likely become a candidate for treatment aimed at preventing further damage. They will bring the patient to a hospital specially designed to deliver early intervention for stroke patients. The key is to get help fast.