What is a stroke?
A stroke is a cerebral vascular accident. They can be hemorrhagic or ischemic. Hemorrhagic strokes refer to intracranial hemorrhage due to rupture of an aneurysm or an arterial vessel. And the ischemic ones are due to obstruction of an artery. Generally, they can be due to thrombosis or embolism. They are the first cause of mortality and the third cause of permanent disability in the western world.
What are the main risk factors?
The main risk factors for suffering a stroke of ischemic origin, that is, due to occlusion of a cerebral artery, intra-cranial or extra-cranial, are usually, in addition to those of advanced age in which this type of event usually occurs, smoking, hypertension, high cholesterol levels -especially bad cholesterol- obesity, sedentary lifestyle, high cholesterol levels -especially bad cholesterol- obesity, sedentary lifestyle, and in several cases diabetes can also have an influence, which conditions an alteration in the arteries of the organism in a generalized manner and also contributes in many cases of hypertension. So it is a closed circle where all pathologies of circulatory origin can also cause problems in the circulatory system, specifically in the arteries that irrigate the brain.
What are the common symptoms that allow us to detect it?
We must be very attentive to the appearance of any symptoms such as those we are going to see now because they are the first reasons for alarm for which you should go immediately to the specialist of Angiology and Vascular Surgery. We have several types, some would be minor, such as small disorientations, small cases of memory loss, amnesic type, but then we can have major cases with the onset of a stroke in which there may be loss of strength in the arm, in the leg, there may be loss of consciousness, there may be alterations in walking, loss of balance, deviation in the corner of the mouth to one side or the other, partial or total loss of vision in one eye, it is also common for example loss of lateral vision, of half an eye to the outside, for example.
All these symptoms should be alarming and the specialist physician should be consulted immediately because they are very indicative of the first signs, of the onset of ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke.
Will early diagnosis determine treatment?
Of course, early diagnosis is fundamental for good treatment. We should bear in mind that in Spain there are between 150 and 200 cases of stroke each year per 100,000 inhabitants. Of all these cases, 90 of the 100,000 will die, 17-18% will be left with sequelae and dependency in the following 6 months and almost 30% (27 and something) will be left with permanent sequelae. Therefore, the symptoms we have shown, go to the specialist quickly and have a diagnosis that is very simple because in addition to the symptomatology, the help of a simple echo-Doppler of supra-aortic trunks allows us to assess the extra-cranial cerebral irrigation, or the practice of an MRI or a scan will allow us to assess the quality of intra-cranial brain tissue or intra-cranial arteries. Later treatment, whether surgical or non-surgical, will benefit greatly the earlier the diagnosis is made.