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Sunday, October 27, 2002Overall, researchers found that women were 62 percent more likely to say they were feeling sensations that aren't on the traditional list of stroke symptoms. "Our findings have important consequences for stroke diagnosis and treatment," said Dr. Lewis Morgenstern, director of the stroke program at the University of Michigan's medical school and senior author of the study published yesterday in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. "All stroke treatments are time-dependent, so if women are not diagnosed promptly, it will slow down the effort to treat them," he added. Let’s look at the study and see what that “62 percent more likely” really means. The study found that 8% of men and 12% of women experienced pain as a stroke symptom and 12% of men and 17% of women had a change in the level of consciousness, symptoms that were deemed “nontraditional” stroke symptoms for the study. Traditional stroke symptoms were defined as loss of balance and paralysis of at least one part of the body. Twenty percent of men and fifteen percent of women reported balance problems. Twenty-four percent of men and fifteen percent of women reported paralysis. There was no one symptom that could be defined as occurring overwhelmingly in women or in men. The most common symptoms clocked in at a proportion of one-fifth to one-fourth of all those reported. (Motor weakness at 24% for men and “nonclassifiable” as 22% in women. But that doesn’t mean women are more likely to have “nonclassifiable” symptoms. Men also had those at a rate of 22%.) Stroke presents with a myriad of symptoms that varies from individual to individual. Some people will report nothing more than a “mental haziness” and others will present in a coma. Some will have a funny feeling in an arm or leg, and others will have a complete loss of their use. The important thing is for physicians to remember the many faces of stroke and consider it in their differential diagnosis regardless of the sex of the patient. posted by Sydney on 10/27/2002 08:42:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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