THURSDAY, Feb. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Infants and children who survive a bleeding stroke may be at increased risk for seizures and epilepsy, a new study finds. Each year in the United States, about six and a half newborns and children out of every 100,000 suffer strokes. About half of the strokes are bleeding strokes, typically caused by the rupturing of weakened or malformed blood vessels. In this study, researchers looked at 73 infants and children, ranging from newborns to 18 years old, who suffered bleeding in their brain tissue, a type of stroke called intracerebral hemorrhage. About 60 percent of the newborns and 43 percent of the older children had visible seizures at the time of the stroke or within one week after the stroke. Of the 32 patients who had continuous brain monitoring, 28 percent had seizures that would otherwise have gone undetected. The researchers plan to explore whether these subtle seizures are a risk factor for more seizures, epilepsy or other problems over the long-term, according to the study. The findings were scheduled for presentation Thursday at the American Stroke Association's annual meeting in Honolulu. The study also will be published simultaneously in the journal JAMA Neurology. … Continue reading →

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Davis Pauley plays in a pit of 18,532 plastic balls, one ball for every autistic child in Utah. Advocates for autism insurance reform placed the huge display in the Capitol Rotunda on Friday. With a huge colorful pit of 18,532 balls each representing a Utah child with autism set up in the Capitol rotunda on Friday, advocates hoped to drive home the impact of the complex brain disorder on the states families. While the pit served as a kid magnet Friday, Layton resident Mirella Petersen also plans to later give lawmakers jars stocked with gum balls: 639 for senators and 247 for House members one for each autistic child in their districts. About Utahs autism treatment pilots Medicaid The state is spending $4.5 million, plus $10.5 million in federal funds, to provide free treatment for up to 250 children for two years through a Medicaid pilot. Unlike the traditional Medicaid plan, the autism pilot doesnt take into account the income of the parents. Once their children are on the pilot, those children also can receive coverage for doctor visits, medications and hospitalizations unrelated to autism. A conservative estimates pegs those costs at $1.7 … Continue reading →

THURSDAY, Feb. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Stroke patients who had surgery to deliver the powerful clot-busting drug tPA directly into the brain had better and quicker recovery than those who received standard treatment, a small new study finds. The researchers looked at 96 patients, aged 18 to 80, who suffered an intracerebral hemorrhage, a type of stroke caused when a blood vessel ruptures in the brain. According to the team from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, intracerebral hemorrhage has long been considered surgically untreatable in most cases. About 50 percent of people with this type of stroke die. It is much less common than ischemic stroke, which is caused by a clot in a blood vessel in the brain. One expert not connected to the study said that although people with a stroke caused by a clot often get the clot-busting drug tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), that's not the case for less common bleeding strokes. "Historically, patients with bleeds into their brain were either observed or underwent cranial surgery to remove the clot and alleviate the intracranial pressure," said Dr. David Langer, director of cerebrovascular research at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y. "Clot-busting drugs were … Continue reading →

E-mail this page to a friend! Health & Medicine for Senior Citizens International Stroke Conference Closes After More Than 1,300 Presentations: Links to Some of Best are Below Five research reports today focus on care for stroke victims - links to these and more are below Feb. 8, 2013 The information-packed International Stroke Conference 2013 on the latest research in stroke care and prevention ended today with five presentations on new discoveries in better treatment for stroke victims. Below are links many of the top presentations are below. This conference sponsored by the American Stroke Association is the worlds largest meeting dedicated to the science and treatment of cerebrovascular disease. This 2-day conference featured more than 1,300 presentations that emphasize basic, clinical and translational sciences as they evolve toward a more complete understanding of stroke pathophysiology with the overall goal of developing more effective prevention and treatment. Some of the top news: Lower blood pressure targets safe in reducing risk of recurrent stroke Study Highlights: Survivors of small-artery strokes who lowered their systolic blood pressure below 130 mm Hg were less likely to suffer a hemorrhagic stroke (bleeding in the brain) than those who lowered it to between 130 mm … Continue reading →

Published: Friday, February 8, 2013, 6:14p.m. Updated 18 hours ago Three long-awaited studies have shown that mechanically removing a blood clot from a stroke patient's brain is no more useful than the older treatment of giving an IV dose of a clot-dissolving drug to the whole body. The results of the clinical trials, presented this week at a meeting in Hawaii, shocked and surprised stroke physicians. Many had already adopted the more aggressive strategy over the last decade. For the stroke field this is a really big deal, Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said of the findings, which were presented over three days at the International Stroke Conference in Honolulu. The institute paid for two of the trials, one of which cost $27 million. One study took eight years to complete because it was so difficult to enroll patients willing to take the chance they'd be randomly assigned to get the older treatment. Practitioners hoped that endovascular treatment, in which a catheter is threaded into a blocked artery and the clot pulled out, would do for stroke patients what it has done for heart attack patients. In them, going after clots with … Continue reading →

An angiogram of a 48-year- old patient after treatment for a stroke. A blockage was targeted with clot-busting drugs using a catheter. An angiogram of a 48-year- old patient after treatment for a stroke. A blockage was targeted with clot-busting drugs using a catheter. It's another case of a beautiful idea colliding with some ugly facts. The beautiful idea is the notion that clearing the blocked artery of a stroke patient with a device snaked right up to the blockage would salvage threatened brain cells and prevent a lot of disability. A lot of stroke patients in the U.S. are already getting this endovascular (within-the-artery) treatment because the Food and Drug Administration approved the devices without clinical proof that they work. Medicare has begun paying for the treatment. But now come those ugly facts. Three studies have now found no difference in outcome between patients who got the endovascular treatment along with an intravenous dose of a clot-busting drug called tPA, or Alteplase, and other patients who got only tPA. "There wasn't really clear evidence that endovascular therapy added to tPA ... was better overall than tPA as the standard treatment," Dr. Joseph Broderick told MedPage Today. "It was hard … Continue reading →

Three long-awaited studies have shown that mechanically removing a blood clot from a stroke patient's brain is no more useful than the older treatment of giving an IV dose of a clot-dissolving drug to the whole body. The results of the clinical trials, presented this week at a meeting in Hawaii, shocked and surprised stroke physicians. Many had already adopted the more aggressive strategy over the past decade. "For the stroke field this is a really big deal," Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said of the findings, which were presented over three days at the International Stroke Conference in Honolulu. Practitioners hoped that "endovascular treatment," in which a catheter is threaded into a blocked artery and the clot is pulled out, would do for stroke patients what it has done for heart attack patients. In them, going after clots with angioplasty balloons and stents is clearly more effective than giving clot-dissolving drugs through a vein in the arm. "We did this study with the strong expectation that we would find a positive benefit. We were surprised," said Joseph Broderick of the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute, who headed one of the studies. … Continue reading →

By Amanda Gardner HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, Feb. 6 (HealthDay News) -- The standard medical care for patients having an ischemic stroke is to give powerful "clot-busting" drugs as soon as possible after the start of the stroke. But some hospitals are starting to rely on new treatment methods that actually go into the artery and retrieve the clot or destroy it at the site. According to a new study from Italy, however, these new methods -- collectively referred to as endovascular treatment -- are no better than the standard clot-buster drug known as tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). "Our findings do not provide support for the use of the more invasive and expensive endovascular therapy over intravenous treatment," said study author Dr. Alfonso Ciccone, director of the stroke unit and neurology department at Carlo Poma Hospital, in Mantua. The results indicate that standard, intravenous tPA is the first-line therapy for acute stroke, he said. "This defines a clear priority in treatment options," said Ciccone, who coordinated the study while working at Niguarda Ca Granda Hospital, in Milan. The study appeared online Feb. 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine, to coincide with a presentation at the American Stroke Association annual … Continue reading →