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Background information
Each year about 100,000 people in this country suffer a first stroke -10,000 of these are under retirement age.
Of those people who have a stroke, around one third die within a year, one third are left with serious disabilities and one third make a good recovery.
Stroke is the largest single cause of severe disability, with 300,000 people being affected at any one time.
(The Stroke Association, 2002)
In 2000, over 60,000 deaths were due to stroke. That's over 160 people dying every day.
(Office for National Statistics, 2001)
Definition
A cerebrovascular incident resulting in permanent neurological damage. Transient ischaemic attacks are specifically excluded.
What does this mean?
As with a heart attack the cause of a stroke is inadequate blood supply, this time to the brain. It can be caused by a blood clot becoming caught in an artery of the brain or the bursting of one of the brain’s blood vessels.
The event that triggers the stroke may result from problems within the body, such as clogged up arteries, or weaknesses in the wall of a blood vessel. Alternatively, a stroke may be caused by an external trauma such as a severe head injury received in a road traffic accident.
After a true stroke there is always permanent brain damage which can cause paralysis to the right or left sides of the body, loss of speech or sight, and other effects such as loss of strength or mobility. In some cases, the damage may be quite minor, but it will depend upon which part of the brain was affected. Transient ischaemic attacks are often known as ministrokes but do not result in permanent damage. They are therefore excluded.
20 May 2008 18:11:27
People who breathe in second-hand tobacco smoke run the risk of damaging their arteries within just 30 minutes of exposure, new research has suggested.
Trials due to be discussed at the forthcoming XVI World Congress of Cardiology have revealed that within this short space of time, passively inhaling smoke can create changes in the arteries which can increase the risk of heart failure.
In addition, it was found that people who passively smoke have a 30 per cent higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
Dr Joaquin Barnoya, research director of the Cardiovascular Surgery Unit of Guatemala, said that the results are worrying because "the longer the arteries of non-smokers are exposed to tobacco smoke, the more they will behave like the arteries of smokers".
He explained: "We know that just 30 minutes' exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke is enough to produce an observable change in the arterial function of non-smokers. Passive tobacco smoke directly damages the endothelium, which is the internal wall of the arteries, responsible for their dilation and contraction."
Dr Barnoya went on to say that the findings are a fair indication that smoke-free environments are a good thing and can be linked to a decrease in heart disease in places like California.
07 July 2008 18:12:50
New research has revealed that women may be more likely to reject a kidney from a man and have suggested same-sex transplants should be considered - which could affect the life insurance policies of patients.
The study involved looking at 200,000 patients and the Swiss researchers found an eight per cent increase in the chance of women rejecting male kidneys.
Conversely, a spokesman for the UK Transplant Authority said that their studies did not support this latest research as "no statistical evidence was found to suggest any of the sex-related factors significantly affected post-transplant graft survival".
The spokesmen went on to conclude: "Therefore, donor to recipient sex matching is not something that is considered in the kidney allocation scheme."
Stem-cell transplant research has already established that women who get "male" cells are at an increased risk of rejecting them or having an immune reaction to "molecules specific to males found on the surface of cells".
Donor patients will be affected by lack of UK life insurance.
17 March 2008 17:32:38
Women who are overweight tend to develop more aggressive breast cancers, new research claims.
According to scientists at the University of Texas, a person's Body Mass Index (BMI) could be used to determine the prognosis of certain types of breast cancer - which may influence the life insurance policies of sufferers.
In a study of over 600 women, researchers found that women with locally advanced breast cancer and inflammatory breast cancer who had a high BMI had a worse prognosis than women with the same cancers whose BMI was healthy.
"The more obese a patient is, the more aggressive the disease," said Dr Massimo Cristofanilli who led the research.
"We are learning that the fat tissue may increase inflammation that leads to more aggressive disease," he added.
Dr Cristofanilli said that this was one of the first studies to examine the links between weight gain, obesity and risk of developing breast cancer.
The study was published in the March 15th issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
BMI is calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by their height in metres squared.
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