Stroke symptoms common among undiagnosed patients
More than one in six people who have never been diagnosed with a stroke or with a transient ischemic attack (TIA) have experienced stroke symptoms, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
A TIA is an episode in which the blood flow to the brain is briefly interrupted, causing stroke-like symptoms that usually last only a few minutes. On the other hand, in strokes the brain blood flow is blocked to a greater extent, leading to more serious deficits, permanent disability or death.
“Coupled with previous reports showing a substantially increased risk of a subsequent stroke in those with stroke symptoms and a substantial prevalence of ‘silent stroke’ according to MRI, our findings suggest that these commonly reported symptoms may be mild strokes that failed to reach the threshold for clinical diagnosis,” lead author Dr. Virginia J. Howard, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues note.
The findings are based on analysis of questionnaire data from 18,462 subjects who were recruited from a randomly sampled national study between 2003 and 2005.
The study group included an oversampling of the southeastern “stroke belt,” areas with high stroke rates, and African American populations, the investigators point out. All of the subjects reported no diagnosis of stroke or TIA.
Overall, 17.8 percent of subjects reported at least one stroke symptom, the investigators note. The prevalence of individual symptoms ranged from 2.7 percent for sudden inability to understand speech, to 4.6 percent for sudden loss of vision, to 8.5 percent for sudden numbness on one side of the body.
These symptoms correlated with the Framingham Stroke Risk Score (FSRS), which estimates a person’s 10-year probability of stroke based on their demographic and risk factor profile. As the FSRS increased, so did the likelihood of having one or more stroke symptom, the report indicates.
Other risk factors for stroke symptoms included being African American, having a low income, less education and fair-to-poor perceived health status.
“Targeted education on the warning signs of stroke and risk factor reduction efforts for individuals who report stroke symptoms may be helpful in improving early recognition and in the prevention of stroke,” the authors conclude.
SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, October 9, 2006.
Print Version
Tell-a-Friend
