Showing posts with label strokes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strokes. Show all posts

Thursday 14 July 2016

People With Stroke Have A Chance At A Full Life

People With Stroke Have A Chance At A Full Life.
Scientists are testing a changed thought-controlled thingamajig that may one day help people go limbs again after they've been paralyzed by a stroke. The device combines a high-tech brain-computer interface with electrical stimulation of the damaged muscles to servant patients relearn how to move frozen limbs. So far, eight patients who had vanished movement in one hand have been through six weeks of group therapy with the device.

They reported improvements in their ability to complete daily tasks. "Things like combing their trifle and buttoning their shirt," explained study author Dr Vivek Prabhakaran, governor of functional neuroimaging in radiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "These are patients who are months and years out from their strokes. Early studies suggested that there was no earnest room for change for these patients, that they had plateaued in the recovery.

We're showing there is still area for change. There is plasticity we can harness". To use the new tool, patients attire a cap of electrodes that picks up brain signals. Those signals are decoded by a computer. The computer, in turn, sends minuscule jolts of electricity through wires to sticky pads placed on the muscles of a patient's paralyzed arm.

The jolts resolution like nerve impulses, powerful the muscles to move. A simple video game on the computer screen prompts patients to judge to hit a target by moving a ball with their affected arm. Patients practice with the game for about two hours at a time, every other day.

Friday 8 May 2015

July Effect For Stroke Patients

July Effect For Stroke Patients.
People who deteriorate strokes in July - the month when medical trainees inauguration their hospital work - don't cost any worse than stroke patients treated the rest of the year, a new study finds. Researchers investigating the designated "July effect" found that when recent medical school graduates begin their residency programs every summer in teaching hospitals, this modification doesn't reduce the quality of care for patients with pressing medical conditions, such as stroke. "We found there was no higher rate of deaths after 30 or 90 days, no poorer or greater rates of disablement or loss of independence and no evidence of a July effect for seizure patients," said the study's lead author, Dr Gustavo Saposnik, director of the Stroke Research Center of St Michael's Hospital, Toronto, in a asylum news release.

For the study, published recently in the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases, the researchers examined records on more than 10300 patients who had an ischemic act (stroke caused by a blood clot) between July 2003 and March 2008. They also analyzed size of hospitalization, referrals to long-term custody facilities and be in want of for readmission or emergency room treatment for a stroke or any other reason in the month after their discharge.

Tuesday 15 October 2013

New Methods Of Diagnosis Of Stroke

New Methods Of Diagnosis Of Stroke.
The translation to correctly diagnosing when a event of dizziness is just instability or a life-threatening stroke may be surprisingly simple: a pair of goggles that measures look movement at the bedside in as little as one minute, a unknown study contends. "This is the first study demonstrating that we can accurately against strokes and non-strokes using this device," said Dr David Newman-Toker, lead actor author of a paper on the technique that is published in the April problem of the journal Stroke totkay. Some 100000 strokes are misdiagnosed as something else each year in the United States, resulting in 20000 to 30000 deaths or harsh material and speech impairments, the researchers said.

As with centre attacks, the key to treating jot and potentially saving a person's life is speed. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the au courant gold standard for assessing stroke, can persuade up to six hours to complete and costs $1200, said Newman-Toker, who is an confidant professor of neurology and otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Sometimes populate don't even get as far as an MRI, and may be sent dwelling-place with a first "mini stroke" that is followed by a enthralling second stroke, he added.

The new study findings come with some significant caveats, however. For one thing, the deliberate over was a small one, involving only 12 patients. "It is illogical for a small consider to prove 100 percent accuracy," said Dr Daniel Labovitz, official of the Stern Stroke Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, who was not affected with the study. About 4 percent of dizziness cases in the exigency range are caused by stroke.

The other caveat is that the device is not yet approved in the United States for diagnosing stroke. The US Food and Drug Administration only recently gave it imprimatur for use in assessing balance. It has been to hand in Europe for that resolve for about a year. The device - known as a video-oculography mechanism - is a modification of a "head impulse test," which is employed regularly for people with chronic dizziness and other inner ear-balance disorders.