Seniors For Living

In the world of emergency care, the “Golden Hour” is defined as the time period of about one hour in which the lives of a majority of critically injured trauma patients can be saved if definitive trauma care intervention is provided. This principle of rapid intervention can also be applied to non-trauma patients such as those having a heart attack or a stroke, in which time to treatment dramatically affects a patient’s outcome.

As a matter of fact, in the case of a stroke, it has recently been shown that stroke patients who reach hospitals within the ‘Golden Hour’ are twice as likely to get a clot-busting drug:

Among more than 100,000 patients treated at hospitals participating in the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke (GWTG-Stroke) quality improvement program, 27.1 percent who arrived within the “golden hour” (one hour of symptom onset) were treated with the clot-busting drug tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). Of those who arrived between one and three hours of symptom onset 12.9 percent received the drug.

Early treatment of stroke (and heart attack) symptoms may mean more treatment options and a better outcome as “time lost is brain lost.” But, in order to get treated, it’s important for people to be familiar with the risk factors and symptoms of a stroke. A stroke can happen to anyone, but according to the National Stroke Association, after the age of 55, your stroke risk doubles for every decade.

Here are the Association’s uncontrollable risk factors for stroke:

Gender – risk is higher in males, but more women than men die from stroke.

Race – If you are African American, your risk is twice the rate for whites. If you are Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander, your stroke risk is also higher than Caucasians.

Family History – If someone in your family has had a stroke, you have a higher risk of stroke yourself.

Previous Stroke or TIA – If you have already had a stroke or a transient ischemic attack (ministroke), you have a 25-40% chance of having another stroke in the next five years.

Controllable risk factors due to medical conditions and lifestyle choice for stroke include hypertension, atrial fibrillation (a type of irregular heart beat) diabetes, being overweight, high cholesterol, smoking, and alcohol use.

A stroke is a medical emergency.

Not all strokes have every sign or symptom, but the signs of a stroke are the sudden onset of:

• numbness or weakness of face, arm or leg – especially on one side of the body
• confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
• trouble seeing in one or both eyes
• trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination
• severe headache with no known cause

It’s important to recognize those things that put you or a loved one at risk for having a stroke, especially those that can be controlled. But it is even more important to know the signs and symptoms of a stroke in order to seek treatment rapidly during the “Golden Hour.”

-Elizabeth Thielke