May 13, 2014 – Stroke Miss

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ANCHOR LEAD: WHO’S AT GREATEST RISK TO HAVE THEIR STROKE DIAGNOSIS MISSED? ELIZABETH TRACEY REPORTS

Identifying stroke early is key to employing the best treatments and medications to reduce long term consequences, but certain groups of people are at high risk for having their diagnosis missed even when they come to the emergency department.  That’s according to research by David Newman-Toker and colleagues at Johns Hopkins.

NEWMAN-TOKER:  What we found was that among patients with probably missed strokes, that not only were they more likely, as we probably sort of expected, to have dizziness and headaches as opposed to other symptoms as their initial manifestations, that there were demographic differences across the group such that women, minorities, and especially young patients were at particularly high risk of being misdiagnosed.   :22

People younger than 45 constitute the ‘younger’ group.  Newman-Toker says addition criteria must be employed to identify these patients when they come to the ED so that clot-busting drugs and other measures are undertaken.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.