Stroke and Time

Offbeat topic. Reading time: 1 min

Interesting stuff I want to share

I was digging through my combined notes system to find ideas on what to write about and I came across something I noted down some months ago, out of interest and surprise:

Every time a person suffers from a stroke, they

1. lose 1.2 billion neurons (for reference, our forebrains will more or less have 22 billion neurons)
2. undergo accelerated ageing by 36 years.

For every second a stroke is untreated, they

1. lose 32,000 neurons
2. undergo accelerated ageing by 8.7 hours.

Source: Time is brain--quantified. Stroke. 2006 Jan;37(1):263-6.

Therefore, when someone suffers from a stroke, they have to get treatment IMMEDIATELY. Although treatment within 3 hours drastically improves chances of recovery with little or no disability, every second still counts.

For reference, 'FAST':

• Face drooping
• Arm weakness
• Speech difficulty
• = Time to call emergency, because those are signs of a stroke.