Study Says

Little Strokes Lead to Big Strokes in a Week

Mini-strokes lead to a major stroke within a week in one out of 20 people and should be treated as a medical emergency, British doctors found out. People who were immediately treated for the small strokes, called Transient Ischemic Attacks, or TIAs, had almost no risk of a major stroke soon afterward. But people who did nothing about a TIA had an 11 per cent risk of a major stroke within a week, Dr Matthew Giles and Peter Rothwell of the Stroke Prevention Research Unit at the University of Oxford reported. Published in the Lancet Neurology, they combined results from 18 different groups of patients, of a total of more than 10,000 people. Just one per cent of patients treated for a TIA at a specialist neurology clinic went on to have a major stroke within a week, compared with 11 per cent of those who ignored the TIA.

Reuters