Thursday, November 7, 2019

Those under 40 at risk of strokes too: doctors

‘Stress due to work, consumption of junk food and alcohol among the triggers’

07/11/2019, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT,CHENNAI


A patient who underwent treatment at the Apollo Speciality Hospitals, OMR, with his doctors on Wednesday. M. Vedhan

Strokes and cardiac arrests can no longer be considered diseases of old age, say doctors.

At Apollo Speciality Hospitals, OMR, in the last two years, out of 400 patients, who suffered strokes, nearly 15% were aged below 40, according to S. Karthikeyan, interventional neurologist.

“We are seeing young persons suffering strokes and heart attacks. It is important to start checking blood pressure and sugar levels from 30 years of age. The risk factors include stress due to work, consumption of junk food, smoking and alcohol. Genetic factors too play a role,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Preying on the young

In fact, Dr. Karthikeyan along with interventional cardiologist Arul E.D. recently treated two young patients, who suffered stroke and heart attacks at short intervals. Doctors said the two patients — aged 32 and 34 — were presented with acute weakness of left upper and lower limb along with chest pain. They were diagnosed with myocardial infarction and acute stroke that needed immediate intervention through thrombolysis. An angioplasty was later done to remove the blocks in their hearts.

As Devachandran J, consultant critical care, said he was seeing more and more persons aged 40 and below with either heart attack or stroke, heart attack after a stroke or stroke after a heart attack.

Lifestyle causes

“Prevention is better than cure. There are factors such as lack of exercise, smoking, working in shifts and improper diet. If you are leading a sedentary lifestyle, get a health check-up done,” he added.

Doctors emphasised that both conditions could be treated with prompt medical help. As separate conditions, stroke and myocardial infarctions have their own risks of morbidity and mortality. But what happens if a person has both simultaneously? Is the heart important or the brain?

Rare case

The doctors recently treated a 83-year-old man, who had acute stroke and acute myocardial infarction simultaneously. “He came in with right side weakness, and ECG showed that he had evidence of heart attack,” Dr. Karthikeyan said.

Doctors performed angioplasty to remove the clot in the blood vessel in his heart within 15 to 20 minutes and performed mechanical thrombectomy to remove the clot from his brain and stabilised him. Dr. Arul said that this was an extremely rare case that had an incidence of 0.009%.

They also treated a 64-year-old patient who had myocardial infarction and stroke in a short interval.

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