- Your Sense of Smell May Be Quicker Than You Think
- Parents or Ambulance: How a Child Reaches an ER Could Matter
- Certain Women May Need Mammograms Before Age 40 — An Expert Explains Why
- Gene Therapy Might Tweak Fats, Help Prevent Arthritis in Overweight Kids
- Half of Patients With Sepsis Die Within 2 Years, Hospital Study Finds
- Could Dad’s Sperm Raise Odds for Common Complications of Pregnancy?
- Homeless Americans’ Death Rate Rises on Hot Days
- Change in Alzheimer’s Drug Vial Size Could Be Big Money-Saver for Medicare
- GLP-1 Weight-Loss Meds Won’t Raise Teens’ Suicide Risk, May Even Lower It
- Most ERs Not Fully Equipped to Treat Pediatric Patients
Strokes Hitting COVID Patients Are More Severe: Study
COVID-19 patients are at increased risk for severe strokes, according to a new study that also found that the overall risk of stroke is higher in younger patients.
Researchers analyzed data from 432 COVID-19 patients in 17 countries who suffered strokes and found they were more likely to have large vessel occlusion (LVO) than stroke patients in the general population.
LVO strokes are caused by a blockage in one of the brain’s major arteries and typically cause more severe symptoms. Nearly 45% of strokes in the COVID-19 patients were LVOs, compared with 24% to 38% of ischemic strokes in the general population being LVOs.
More than a third of the COVID-19 patients with stroke were younger than 55, and nearly half were younger than 65. In the general population, 13% of strokes occur in people younger than 55 and 21% in people younger than 65.
The study also found that less severe strokes often went undiagnosed. Most of those strokes occurred in critically ill patients or in patients in overwhelmed health centers.
That’s an important finding because a minor stroke may be an important risk factor for a more severe stroke in the future, according to the COVID-19 Stroke Study Group.
The study was published recently in the journal Stroke.
“Our observation of a higher median stroke severity in countries with lower health care spending may reflect a lower capacity for the diagnosis of mild stroke in patients during the pandemic, but this may also indicate that patients with mild stroke symptoms refused to present to the hospitals,” said study group leader Dr. Ramin Zand, a vascular neurologist and clinician-scientist at Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania. He spoke in a Geisinger news release.
The international study group was formed shortly after the pandemic began to examine study the link between COVID-19 and stroke risk.
In the first phase, the group found that hospitalized COVID-19 patients had an overall stroke risk of 0.5% to 1.2%. That shows that while COVID-19 patients have an increased risk of stroke, the overall risk is low, according to the researchers.
More information
The American Stroke Association has more on stroke.
SOURCE: Geisinger Health System, news release, June 1, 2021
Source: HealthDay
Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.