The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Early intervention lowers risk of stroke: expert

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Monday, Jan 21, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

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Early intervention lowers risk of stroke: expert

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: The sooner neurologists differentiate a stroke build-up from a set of symptoms that mimic the condition, the lower the risk of a patient developing a stroke, S. M. Katrak, neurology professor, Grant Medical College, Sir JJ Hospital, Mumbai, said on Sunday.

Delivering the Sixth Krishnamoorthy Srinivas lecture under the auspices of the Neuro Sciences India Group, he said it was important that physicians learnt to make a rapid assessment of what symptomatic leads to follow and what to ignore before beginning therapy.

Pointing out that over 80 per cent of “brain attacks” were ischemic, Dr. Katrak said that in this context, Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIAs) required closer scrutiny. Several recent studies indicated that urgency in approach, and not a “wait-and-watch” management maxim, was significantly lowering the risk of patients getting a stroke.

The new thinking was that TIAs should be regarded as a neurological emergency and treated accordingly. “On the face of growing evidence, TIAs are better predictors of a stroke than the initial stroke itself.”

Advising neurologists not to treat TIAs as a benign condition, Dr. Katrak said that what an angina was to the heart, a TIA was to the brain; the crucial differentiator though was the absence of pain in the latter. “If you take 100 patients each with either of the conditions, it is likely that chest pain will force 95 per cent of the former to hospital, while less than 5 per cent of TIAs will be troubled to undertake a hospital visit.”

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