Precursors to cerebral infarction

Written by Chen Yu Fei
Neurosurgery
Updated on August 31, 2024
00:00
00:00

For patients with cerebral infarction, before the onset of the illness, they often lack specific prodromal symptoms. Some patients may experience mild headaches, dizziness, nausea, and a clear feeling of discomfort. Additionally, some patients might experience numbness in the legs and involuntary twitching of facial muscles before the onset. Subsequently, some patients may also start to have drooping of the corner of the mouth to one side, drooling, slurred speech, and distinct articulation disorders. When these clinical presentations occur, it is necessary to be vigilant and seek timely medical attention at a local hospital. A cranial CT or MRI should be performed to confirm the diagnosis.

Other Voices

doctor image
home-news-image
Written by Gao Yi Shen
Neurosurgery
57sec home-news-image

Is it good to drink milk after a stroke?

Patients with cerebral infarction can drink milk, but it must be analyzed according to the specific condition at the time because patients with cerebral infarction often experience coma and accompanying dysphagia with coughing. In such cases, drinking milk is not a problem, but attention must be paid to changes in dietary habits. If necessary, a gastric tube must be inserted through the nose into the stomach for feeding to avoid direct oral intake, which can cause coughing, aspiration, and lead to pneumonia. Therefore, this point must be carefully considered. For ordinary people in daily life, a cup of milk a day is a very good choice because milk mainly contains protein and does not contain a lot of fat and sugar. For patients with cerebral infarction, this diet is very ideal. If fresh milk can be used in everyday life, it is more beneficial for promoting the patient's recovery.

doctor image
home-news-image
Written by Gao Yi Shen
Neurosurgery
1min home-news-image

Can the blood vessels in a cerebral infarction be unblocked?

Whether the blood vessels in a cerebral infarction can be reopened is closely related to time. If it is within the hyperacute phase, which means within six hours from the onset of clinical symptoms to hospital admission, the majority of cases can undergo thrombolysis intravenously, or arterial thrombectomy to reopen the blood vessels. However, if the time exceeds this window, reopening is no longer feasible, and forced reopening at this stage can easily lead to the detachment of distal thrombi or cause reperfusion injury, which is more detrimental to the patient's condition. Therefore, it is impossible to reopen the blood vessels during the chronic phase or non-hyperacute phase. If treatment of this vascular occlusion is desired, vascular anastomosis can be considered, though the specific type of anastomosis surgery depends on the patient's specific condition at the time. Thus, the possibility of reopening a blood vessel in a cerebral infarction certainly depends on timing.

doctor image
home-news-image
Written by Gao Yi Shen
Neurosurgery
56sec home-news-image

Can cerebral infarction be cured completely?

Stroke is not a disease that can be completely cured. Instead, the goal of treatment is to prevent further occurrences and developments of stroke, and there is also the potential for some relative improvement later on. This is considered a very good treatment goal. In the case of stroke, it involves the ischemic necrosis of nerve cells. Additionally, nerve cells have a characteristic that once they die, they cannot regenerate. Therefore, in clinical practice, there are no treatments available that can promote the regeneration of nerves. Treatment can only compensate for the functions of the surrounding healthy nerves to take over the functions of the dead nerves. However, this compensatory process is very slow, often taking two to three months to show significant progress. Hence, it is necessary to continue active rehabilitation exercises later to promote the formation of this compensatory mechanism.

doctor image
home-news-image
Written by Chen Yu Fei
Neurosurgery
49sec home-news-image

Symptoms of cerebral infarction

For patients with cerebral infarction, during the acute phase, they typically exhibit clear symptoms of headache, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting. Patients may experience slurred speech, difficulty speaking, and obvious articulation disorders. Additionally, some patients may develop facial nerve paralysis, deviation of the mouth to one side, drooling, and often exhibit clinical signs such as a shallower nasolabial fold and disappearance of forehead wrinkles. Furthermore, some patients may also experience dysphagia, manifested by coughing when drinking water, and may be accompanied by aphasia or motor dysfunction, primarily presenting as motor aphasia, mixed aphasia, anomic aphasia, and resulting unilateral limb paralysis.

doctor image
home-news-image
Written by Li Qiang
Intensive Care Unit
1min 13sec home-news-image

The difference between lacunar infarction and cerebral infarction

Lacunar stroke is a type of cerebral infarction and is considered the mildest form within strokes. Generally, the area affected by a lacunar infarction is very small, so if it is a single incident or there are not many lacunar strokes, it usually does not cause any symptoms. Many middle-aged and elderly people over the age of fifty or sixty who undergo routine CT scans during physical examinations exhibit signs of lacunar stroke on their CT images, yet most of them do not present any clinical symptoms. Therefore, lacunar stroke may only affect brain function and result in symptoms such as speech difficulties, slow reactions, weakened muscle strength in the limbs, or lack of coordination when there are numerous occurrences. Cerebral infarction can include strokes that affect larger areas of the brain, which are much more severe than lacunar strokes. These larger strokes are sufficient to cause clinical symptoms, which may include hemiplegia, drooping of the corner of the mouth and drooling, abnormal limb movements, and even fatal events in cases of extensive cerebral infarction. Thus, lacunar stroke, being a type of cerebral infarction, represents the mildest form of stroke.