What is a Stroke and How is it Diagnosed?
A stroke is caused by a blockage of blood supply to the brain. Ischemic strokes are caused by blockage of arteries that lead to the brain while hemorrhagic strokes are caused by blood vessels that burst and bleed in the brain. Symptoms include loss of sensations, weakness, or other functions based on the part of the brain that is affected. To diagnose a stroke requires quick action in seeking medical attention. The doctors will obtain a medical history and determine your symptoms. If the symptoms are worrying for a stroke, they will likely obtain neuroimaging (imaging of the brain), either through a CT Scan or MRI, to determine if there are blood flow problems. This must all happen quickly because with a stroke, time is tissue.
What Causes a Delay in Diagnosing a Stroke?
Most of the time, a delay in diagnosing a stroke is a failure to recognize stroke symptoms which in turn causes a delay in obtaining imaging. Although sometimes the medical providers recognize stroke symptoms and still fail to obtain imaging promptly. In a study in Canada researchers looked at 13,250 patients with stroke-like symptoms. They determined that 3,984 arrive within 4 hours after symptom onset and only 27.3% had timely neuroimaging. A similar study in the U.S. had timely neuroimaging (within 25 minutes after arrival) about 41.7% of the time. Both of these studies point out how critical timely imaging is to get a correct diagnosis and implement treatment immediately.
A Possible Solution
At the 2020 International Stroke Conference, findings were presented on a new portable MRI machine has come out as a potential solution to get patients neuroimaging faster. Part of this comes from the need for a portable imaging system to reach patients who may have trouble getting to the imaging machine in another part of the hospital. The findings showed that on 96 adults with a clinical diagnosis of stroke, 87% were successfully imaged, while the others were either to big for the machine or claustrophobic. The hardware and software are continuously improving and yielding higher quality images which creates the potential for this technology to succeed. The ease of use of a portable MRI machine has the potential to dramatically reduce any delay in diagnosing a stroke. Therefore, we can only hope that more hospitals undertake studies to increase the use of this great technology.
