New stroke diagnosis

Press, 26 November 1982, Page 26

New stroke diagnosis

NZPA Boston A new test allows doctors to diagnose a stroke and begin treatment within minutes of the attack by measuring the flow of blood in the brain, researchers said.

The new procedure is faster and cheaper than C.T. scanning, the diagnostic method that is now the standard way of checking for this disorder. “It should allow doctors to limit the degree of stroke damage by identifying the problem early,” said one of the researchers, Dr Thomas Hill, of New England Deaconess Hospital, Boston. Doctors said most people who suffered strokes could probably benefit from the test.

The first large-scale evaluation of the test was conducted by Dr Hill and Dr Robert Lee, both of New England Deaconess, and Dr

Leonard Holman,’’ of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Two reports on their work were published in the journal, “Radiology.” A stroke is a disruption of a blood vessel in the neck or head. It can result in permanent brain damage that causes loss of speech or movement. Strokes are the third leading cause of death in the United States. With the new test, doctors inject a radioactive material into the head. Then they take a picture with a camera, widely used in hospitals, that picks up radioactive images. The pictures clearly depict areas of the brain where the flow of blood has been cut off.

“This is the. first easy and readily available method to measure blood flow to the brain,” Mr Holman told a news' conference. The C.T. scanner takes a

cross-sectional X-ray picture of the head which shows only structural abnormalities in the brain, not restricted blood flow. And the results of a stroke may not appear on the C.T. scan until two days or more after the attack.

The doctors said physicians frequently suspected that a patient had suffered a stroke, but they could not tell whether it had actually happened or how large it was.

Dr Hill said that the new technique should soon be available in almost every hospital in the United States. Doctors used the new test, called an N-Isopropyl 1-123 P-lodoamphetamine brain scan, on 24 suspected stroke victims. One man had the test within four hours after he reached hospital. It showed that he had had a stroke, but the stroke damage did not appear on a C.T. scan until seven days later.