The Foundation for Stroke Prevention
A Stroke Resource for Patients and Professionals
The treatment of stroke patients has been characterized by the need for speed. The only medical therapy available, a clot dissolving drug called tPA, was originally available for use only if it could be given less than 3 hours after the start of symptoms. This led to the development of stroke centers to treat patients … Read more…
Last month, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association released a new guideline for the prevention, detection, evaluation and management of high blood pressure in adults. This is the first comprehensive update since 2003. The most important points for the public are new thresholds for starting treatment with medications, and new levels … Read more…
The modern era of stroke treatment began 20 years ago today, with the publication of the NINDS tPA trial in The New England Journal of Medicine. Back in those days, stroke was not considered treatable, and there was no urgency attached to the care of stroke patients. A CT scan was not a test that … Read more…
Atrial fibrillation is a type of irregular heartbeat that is quite common in the elderly. This condition results in the tendency for blood clots to originate in the heart and move into the brain, plugging blood vessels and causing a stroke. The strokes associated with atrial fibrillation tend to be large and severe. There are … Read more…
A new study, by far the largest analysis of stroke treatment with a clot dissolving drug, demonstrates dramatically the importance of early stroke treatment. A team of physicians from the UCLA stroke center analyzed data from a national database on over 58,000 patients treated with the drug tPA, which is the only FDA approved medication … Read more…