Every 20 seconds, one Indian suffers a brain stroke, or three every minute, and the numbers are increasing alarmingly due to changing lifestyles.
At this rate, around 1.54 million Indians are affected bystrokes every year and the worse is 90 per cent of stroke patients failed toreach hospital on time.
The lifetime risk of stroke after the age of 55 is 1 in 5for women and 1 in 6 for men.
These revelations came at the ongoing 3-day Fourth Congressof Society of Neuro Vascular Intervention (SNVICON) Mumbai 2019, withinternational participation, here on Saturday.
Prominent speakers said the message was simple but alarming– that in India, the numbers of brain strokes are increasing and it would notbe wrong to say they are “life-style related”.
Breach Candy Hospital’s Senior Consultant Neurosurgeon andInterventional Neurosurgeon Dr Anil P. Karapurkar said that like a healthyheart, a healthy brain is important, for which precautions need to be taken.
“In case of a heart attack, it is either you are goneor you recover. In case of a brain stroke, you may be gone, you may recover andcome to normal, or you become dependent for life,” Karapurkar warned.
He explained that in case of a heart attack, there are halfa dozen basic symptoms such as chest pain, breathlessness, pain in left shoulderand upper abdomen, but in case of strokes, symptoms may vary depending on whichside of the brain is affected.
“Stroke is a sudden loss of function of a part of thebody. It can happen out of the blue. The simple rule to follow in case of astroke is – ‘BE FAST’ – Balance, Eyes, Face, Arms, Speech, Time,” headvised.
If a person suffers from problems in balancing, hoarsenessin voice, sudden loss of vision, drops an object, giddiness, the first thing isto rush him to hospital without wasting time.
Karapurkar cautioned that treatment for brain strokes cannotstart at home and a CT Scan or a MRI Scan is necessary, and since 2015, doctorsfollow a protocol of CT plus angio or MRI plus angio to tackle such cases.The neurological fraternity is now contemplatinglaunching a massive outreach programme with family doctors and generalpractitioners to create more awareness about how to deal with brain strokeemergencies.