Definition
“Stroke” is best understood as a “brain attack.” [1] It happens in the same way as a heart attack. Healthcare professionals call them cerebrovascular accidents (CVA’s). A stroke occurs when blood doesn’t get to a certain part of the brain. This results in the death of that brain tissue. Unlike muscle, liver, other body organs, brain, and spinal cord tissue don’t grow back after it dies. Retraining other parts of the brain and the body can help function. But the injured brain does not come back. That’s one reason why brain and spinal injuries are so devastating.
Risk
The risk factors for a stroke are high blood pressure, poorly controlled diabetes, unhealthy cholesterol, smoking, age, heredity, and bad luck. The worse that these conditions are handled, the more injury that occurs to the inside of arteries. The damage leads to hardening, weakening, and clogging of arteries. That goes for every artery in the body. If an artery shuts down fast (and completely), it’s always a bad thing. It’s especially bad when it happens to the blood supply to the heart or brain. We’ll talk about that more later.
There are no absolutes in medicine. That’s especially true with strokes. A perfectly healthy person can have a stroke of some kind. And chain-smoking, uncontrolled diabetes, untreated high blood pressure, family history of stroke, and old age don’t mean that you will have one. The science of stroke is about reducing risk; there are no guarantees. At least one thing is certain- the burden of stroke falls differently on different American ethnicities. [2] [2.5]
What usually happens
There are lots of kinds of strokes. The most common type of stroke is called an “ischemic stroke.” The most common specific kind of stroke occurs when blood flow in all or part of the middle cerebral artery stops. In an MCA stroke, [3] the patient loses motor control of portions of the face on the same side of the stroke and loses control of the main muscles of the arm and leg on the opposite side. For example, if the MCA on the left is thrombosed-precipitously shut off, the left side of the face and the right arm and leg are paralyzed to some degree.
Next, we are going to talk about the immediate treatment of stroke. See you then.
[2] http://www.strokecenter.org/patients/about-stroke/stroke-statistics/
[2.5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19026907/
[3] http://www.strokecenter.org/professionals/brain-anatomy/blood-vessels-of-the-brain/