Brain injury is unfortunately common in patients who have just received emergency cardiac treatment. However, Yale professor, Dr. Alexandra Lansky, and colleagues are on a mission to have tighter measures introduced as standard to try and reduce this number. There are various cardiac procedures that patients undergo that put them at risk of having a stroke because of the emboli that travels from the heart to the brain via the blood.
Lanksy is also co-chair of The Neurologic Academic Research Consortium, who is responsible for producing the paper. She said, “As even the smallest damage to particular parts of the brain can impact a patient’s memory and day-to-day ability to function, my colleagues and I have grown increasingly concerned that safety evaluations of the newer cardiovascular procedures only evaluate the extreme life-threatening forms of brain damage. This paper outlines the new to use and report more modern and sensitive measures to evaluate brain injury related to cardiac procedures.”
As part of the paper, Lansky and her colleagues addressed the fact that strokes are among one of the most feared complications following cardiovascular interventions by offering a simple classification system to be introduced. The system would indicate what the level of potential brain damage the patient could suffer such as stroke or neurologic dysfunction. By introducing a more tightly controlled measuring regime, patients will receive a more accurate brain damage diagnosis, and as a result fewer patients will suffer major complications and be treated quicker.
Related Links;
More News To Read
