Ischemic Stroke

Vinpocetine, first discovered in the 1960s, is produced in the lab by chemically altering vincamine, a compound from the Vinca minor periwinkle plant. In some countries, such as Germany, it's available only by prescription, but in the United States it's sold as a supplement for enhancing memory and focus. * Uses: Vinpocetine has been used for decades to treat Alzheimer's disease, dementia and stroke patients in Europe, Japan, Mexico and sometimes the U.S.

Many men in their 50s and older are taking aspirin on a daily basis as a prophylactic for a heart attack or stroke. My father was one of those men, deemed at high risk because of his age, diet, weight and family history of stroke and hypertension. He was taking an aspirin a day hoping to prevent a heart attack or stroke. However, like many men on aspirin therapy, my father was largely unaware of aspirin's potential side effects.

Stroke patients are more likely to survive if they are treated at a designated stroke center -- hospitals that have received certification for state-of-the-art stroke care by The Joint Commission , an agency that accredits healthcare organizations, researchers reported Tuesday. About 700 of the nation's 5,000 acute-care hospitals are accredited stroke centers, but there has been a lack of evidence to support that patients at designated stroke centers are better off. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Mild strokes can cause disability, but people who have them usually don't receive the clot-busting medication that is recommended for people with severe strokes. A new study, however, suggests that giving more people the medication might prevent a lot of disability and reduce healthcare costs. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati looked at the hospital records of 437 people who had a mild ischemic stroke, the kind of stroke that is caused by a blood clot. All of these patients arrived within 4.5 hours of the stroke, which is necessary for the medication -- tissue plasminogen activator -- to be effective.

Doctors have known for at least 10 years that stroke should be treated as an emergency. But that knowledge doesn't always translate into practice. Beginning early next year, however, some stroke patients in Los Angeles County will receive an experimental stroke treatment as soon as humanly possible -- in an ambulance. A new federal study, based at UCLA Medical Center, will attempt to determine whether rapid treatment with magnesium sulfate can limit brain damage in stroke patients.

The news that Delaware Atty. Gen. Beau Biden, age 41, recently suffered a mild stroke probably came as a surprise to many people, considering that the son of Vice President Joe Biden is relatively young, trim and in seemingly good health. It shouldn't have. Strokes are not unheard-of in people that age, said Dr. David S. Liebeskind, associate director of the UCLA Stroke Center. "It doesn't surprise me at all," he said. "Overall, the perception is that only older people have strokes, but we see a lot of people who have strokes at that age, even younger sometimes."

JUST for the record, vampire bats don't suck. They lap. Under the cover of darkness, the mouse-sized Desmodus rotundus flies out from rocky caves to find a sleeping horse or cow. Its razor-sharp incisors carve out a tidy crater of flesh, no bigger than a Halloween M&M, usually without waking its prey. Then, perched over the welling wound, the vampire bat laps up about a tablespoon of blood -- its sole source of nourishment -- with a delicate, bright-pink tongue.

A federally convened panel of experts Friday recommended that the U.S. health care system design a national blueprint for emergency stroke treatment, saying that acute strokes should be treated with the same urgency as heart attacks and trauma. Recent research has shown that acute strokes can be successfully treated, meaning that there will be no permanent impairment, but only during a small window of opportunity--as short as three hours--after onset of symptoms.

Rapid treatment with a clot-dissolving drug may stop or even reverse brain damage caused by strokes, according to a team of physician researchers at the UCI Medical Center. Dr. Larry-Stuart Deutsch, the medical center's chief of cardiovascular and interventional radiology, said one stroke victim, an 18-year-old woman, so far has been treated by the researchers with the clot-dissolving drug urokinaseM, an enzyme.

In an ominous development, critically ill Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rushed Friday into his third round of surgery in two days to stem new bleeding in his brain. Doctors said they managed to halt the bleeding, and also took measures to relieve pressure that had built up in Sharon's skull in the wake of the massive cerebral hemorrhage he suffered Wednesday night. After the five-hour operation, Hadassah University Medical Center director Dr.