Heart Disease

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What is Stroke?

1.22 Stroke or brain attack (cerebrovascular accident) occurs when the arteries reaching the brain to supply oxygen and other nutrients are blocked by a clot or burst causing death of brain cells due to an abrupt oxygen starvation in the brain. If the results are not fatal, the affected area of the brain can impair the organs or functions of the body, which it directly controls. Whereas a heart attack mostly produces chest pain, there is no pain in the case of a stroke.

1.23 Stroke Symptoms – Stroke patients may suffer from passing symptoms such as:
(i) sudden tingling, numbness, paralysis or weakness of the face, hands, arm or leg, mainly on one side of the body;
(ii) sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding;
(iii) sudden trouble seeing in one eye or both eyes;
(iv) sudden trouble walking, dizziness, light headedness, loss of balance or coordination;
(v) sudden amnesia, mental impairment;
(vi) sudden nausea, vomiting, fever; and
(vii) sudden severe headache with no known cause.

1.24 Many of these symptoms sometimes last for less than 24 hours or sometimes a couple of days, tricking patients, their family members and even some physicians into dismissing the symptoms as general weakness of the body.

1.25 Risk Factors for Stroke – As for heart attack, just controlling the risk factors of hypertension, high cholesterol, smoking, physical inactivity, abdominal obesity, heart disease, unhealthy diet, excess alcohol consumption, and psychosocial stressors can help save people from disability and death.

1.26 There are two kinds of strokes:
(i) Ischemic Stroke – This is the most common type of stroke which is caused by a blockage in one or more arteries that supply blood to the brain. As in cardiovascular disease, the blockage happens when a blood clot (thrombus) or a fatty deposit (atheroma) breaks off and travels in the blood stream, finally blocking an artery that supplies blood to the brain. Blood clots form when a fatty deposit in the wall of an artery ruptures, narrowing or completely blocking the artery and stopping the blood flow. This starves the brain of blood and oxygen, leading to a stroke.

(ii) Haemorrhagic Stroke – This is caused by a blood vessel that bursts and bleeds into the brain. The bleeding damages the cells of a specific region of the brain as a result of which the affected region can’t function normally.