Aggressive prevention can reduce a patient's risk of a first stroke
 Individuals can decrease their risk of stroke and stroke mortality by reducing high blood pressure and hyperlipidemia, cessation of cigarette smoking, moderation of alcohol consumption, and careful management of diabetes mellitus and cardiac disease.  Additional medical or surgical treatment can reduce the chance of stroke in individuals at particularly high risk including those who have had a recent TIA (a warning sign of stroke) or myocardial infarction or those with atrial fibrillation.  More remains to be learned about other potentially modifiable risk factors for stroke.

New therapies administered during an acute ischemic stroke can sometimes reverse or limit brain injury
 In certain cases, new treatments may entirely reverse the course of an evolving ischemic stroke or limit the permanent brain injury that it produces.  However, their use requires that the patient or family recognize the warning signs of stroke and reach the hospital within the first 1-2 hours after the stroke has begun.

The Five Warning Signs of Stroke
  • Sudden numbness or weakness of face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body
  • Sudden confusion, trouble speaking, or understanding
  • Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
  • Sudden dizziness, loss of balance or coordination, or trouble walking
  • Sudden, severe headache with no known cause
(source: patient education literature provided by the American Stroke Association)

Ongoing research should provide future physicians with additional ways to limit brain damage once the "triggering" vascular event has occurred.  However, at present, physicians do a better job of reducing the chances that a stroke will happen in the first place than in reversing one which has begun.

Alice: "...Nathan, you're having a stroke...


Nathan: "...I reached for the coffee..."


Alice: "...The strength in his hand returned..."



Alice: "Get moving..."