Public service announcement
Bookworm on Aug 03 2009 at 3:01 pm | Filed under: Health
On the same day I heard a friend tell about her father’s stroke, which was initially misdiagnosed and therefore not treated, I got the following in an email. It’s a no brainer to pass it on to you:
STROKE IDENTIFICATION
It only takes a minute to read this…A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke…totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.
RECOGNIZING A STROKE — Remember the 1st Three Letters….S.T.R.
Thank God for the sense to remember the ’3′ steps, STR . Read and Learn!
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.
Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
S *Ask the individual to SMILE.
T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (i.e. It is sunny out today.)
R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.
New Sign of a Stroke ——– Stick out Your Tongue
NOTE: Another ‘sign’ of a stroke is this: Ask the person to ‘stick’ out his tongue.. If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other,that is also an indication of a stroke.
A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.
I have done my part….will you?
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3 Responses to “Public service announcement”
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Fast action IS key, but be cautious about tossing around the bit about totally reversing the effects of a stroke. This is from an article I wrote a couple of years ago for a hospital client:
So it’s not quite as easy as the article makes out. We had people file malpractice suits because while they got to the hospital within the 3 hour window (with half an hour to spare in the case I knew about personally from working on this article), by the time it was determined that thrombolytics were appropriate there wasn’t much effect. They’d read that if the drugs had just been administered within 3 hours, there would be no lasting effect, so it was the hospital’s fault for pausing to figure out whether or not the “wonder drug” would be fatal.
So YES, time is absolutely of the essence, but there still aren’t guarantees.
Bookworm –
That is an awesome way to remember how to check for a possible stroke.
As most of your readers know, I am a cardiac nurse. I’m constantly amazed at the number of people we see who say, “Well, I’ve been having this strange chest pressure and weird feeling radiating down my left hand for the last 3 days.”
Maybe if they had come in earlier, we could have reduced the damage to the heart.
Bottom line is that if you do start feeling pressure in your chest, numbness in your arm, aching in your jaw, or if you suddenly start having trouble talking and you can’t raise both arms in front of you, close your eyes, and keep one or both arms from “drifting” to the side or down, and ESPECIALLY if you suddenly start having shortness of breath:
GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM!!! DO NOT WAIT!!!!
Few people like going to the hospital but don’t worry about appearing “silly.” Any nurse or doctor worth his/her salt will not think a thing about you coming in, only to find that the potential stroke/brain attack or heart attack . . . isn’t.
This showed up on the net last week, completely with a troll saying do not look at a deviating tongue.
BW. The advise you broadcast is important. We can prevent brain damage if the patient gets to a trained doc in time.
This means major cities. Major medical centers.
And this is NOT Obamacare.
Al