Home / Critical illness cover / - Stroke
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.
10 October 2007 16:08:29
The importance of critical illness cover has been underlined by new research showing the long-term effects of a stressful job.
Individuals can reportedly double their risk of heart problems if they have already had a heart attack and they are stressed at work.
Scientists from University Laval in Quebec asked 972 men and women aged 35 to 59 years who had returned to work after a heart attack to rate their job strain.
After almost six years they returned to the participants and found that 206 of them had a confirmed recurrent coronary heart disease (CHD) event.
Commenting that chronic job strain was associated with a two-fold increase in the risk of recurrent CHD events after taking other factors into account, the researchers advised that patients and doctors put a greater emphasis on evaluating work stress.
"These results suggest that preventive interventions aimed at reducing job strain might have a significant impact on recurrent CHD events," they wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
A recent survey revealed the impact of Britain's long working hours on people's health.
Legal and General questioned over 2,000 people about their health anxieties over the last three months and found that over a fifth felt stressed by their daily routines.
10 June 2008 17:43:59
In addition to being life-threatening, smoking and obesity could cause permanent hearing damage, a new study has found.
The latest research, carried out at Antwerp University, showed that smokers and obese people had difficulty picking out high frequency sounds.
Those that had been exposed to very loud noises in the workplace were the worst affected, however.
Dr Erik Fransen, one of the lead researchers at Antwerp University, said: "The hearing loss is proportional to how much you smoke and your body mass index (BMI). It starts getting worse once you have smoked regularly for more than one year."
Unfortunately for those affected, Dr Fransen explained that "once the damage has been caused, there is no way to repair it".
Researchers believe that smoking can disrupt the flow of blood around the body which in turn restricts oxygen. This process, together with a build up of toxic waste, is thought to damage the ear.
26 June 2007 12:19:47
The ways in which UK consumers buy life insurance are set for an overhaul this week, following the publication of a new review from the Financial Services Authority (FSA).
The FSA will publish its retail distribution review on June 27th, following a year of research into the workings of the life, investment and pensions market.
The review is expected to recommend an alteration of the current system of commission payment, so that the payment of sales advisers can be implemented in a way that meets market efficiency targets without harming customer interests.
Alex Roy, assistant director of retail distribution at the Association of British Insurers, told Reuters that there was certainly room for improvement.
"It's not that the market is broken, but there are some areas that are not working as they should and are in need of repair," he said.
"I don't think we need to be afraid of selling in this industry, but if you are getting independent advice and you want to have confidence that advice is independent, commissions can hide the costs, making it less clear and trustworthy."
