Sunday, 4 March 2012

A History of Stroke

The father of medicine, Hippocrates was the first to recognized stroke many years ago. However, it was not known as stroke, instead it was called apoplexy, which means “struck down by violence” in Greek. This is because it causes people to develop sudden paralysis and change in well being. Doctors have little knowledge about it.

Around mid 1600, Jacob Wepfer found out that patients who died due to apoplexy were having bleeding in the brain. He discovered that a blockage in the brain’s blood vessels could cause apoplexy.

Studies on causes, symptoms and treatments of apoplexy were carried out. In 1928, apoplexy was divided to different categories based on the cause of the blood vessels problem. The term stroke or “cerebral vascular accident (CVA) come from this.

In this century, there is a lot of information available on the cause, prevention, risk and treatment of stroke. Most stroke patients have a goof chance to survival and recovery though there is no cure for it.  

Facts: 1.According to WHO, 17 million people suffer stroke worldwide every year.
          2. 5 million out of 15 million died and another 5 million are permanently disabled.
          3. High blood pressure is one of the main contributors to stroke.

References :
http://www.yalemedicalgroup.org/stw/Page.asp?PageID=STW022874
http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/resources/atlas/en/

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