Hello! Welcome to
I’d recommend that you have a
formal grasp of neuroanatomy before
embarking upon our lecture series
together here in neuropathology.
We’ll begin our topic
by looking at stroke,
the stroke itself in general as we
go through the various categories.
The third leading cause of
death, so it’s no joke.
Now, as we go through stroke, I’m
going to give you some differentials,
things that you want to keep in mind
as we’ve been doing within our course.
Here, you want to be able to
differentiate between a stroke
versus a transient ischemic attack.
And the reason for that
is because the symptoms
that the patient is going to present
will be quite similar, won’t they?
However, the time course
is extremely different.
We’ll talk about that in a second.
Now, how did the
stroke take place?
How is there decrease in blood
supply taking place to the brain
in which all of a sudden
you’ve lost your functioning?
Well, if it is transient ischemic attack,
we’ll usually now define it
as being stroke-like symptoms
that last maybe
approximately 15 minutes,
maybe about an hour,
maybe about 24 hours.
the symptoms go away and the patient
comes back to being normal.
a family, husband and wife, sitting
in a living room, watching TV.
And they’re watching their favorite
show, maybe perhaps Full House.
And all of a sudden, the husband
is having a hard time with vision,
having a hard time
speaking, slurred speech,
and really is having a hard time
getting out of his recliner.
The wife gets extremely
concerned and so therefore,
go to the doctor, and only
to come to find out that
in a very transient amount of time, maybe
less than an hour,
all the symptoms go away.
That’s transient ischemic attack.
The symptoms are extremely
similar to stroke, aren’t they?
But it goes away.
However, what you need to keep in mind
is that this is a risk factor for a stroke
or impending stroke about to happen.
And so therefore, you need to quite
aggressive with your patient
to make sure that if it is a microemboli
that is being set off into
the circulation of the brain
that it has to be
The pathophys, now 85% of the strokes
that do occur are of ischemic nature
whereas 15% could be hemorrhagic.
And therefore, our time and your time
should be focused upon ischemic.
And then to make sure that we’re complete,
I’d give you a proper definition
of a hemorrhagic stroke.