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Dr. Barrett of Kessler Foundation Comments on Stroke Incidence and Mortality Study in Cardiology Today

A.M. Barrett, MD, director of Stroke Rehabilitation Research at Kessler Foundation, provided commentary on new stroke research findings in Cardiology Today on Healio.com—“US Stroke Incidence, Mortality Rates Declined from 1987 to 2011” by the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities. While glad that stroke events decreased, Dr. Barrett emphasized the importance of recognizing the burden of disability that often follows stroke.  She also stressed the need for accurate assessment of stroke to detect right brain strokes and hidden disabilities that frequently go undiagnosed, such as functional vision impairments, after stroke.  Kessler Foundation’s stroke research team discovers treatments to treat hidden disabilities that significantly impact a stroke survivor’s independence and quality of life. 

“Burden or disability tends to get swept to one side when we are thinking about stroke, but it really is what matters to our society,” said Dr. Barrett. “It is very possible that many people who had hidden disabilities or silent strokes were missed with this [study]… We have to be very careful not to miss those patients in every stage of care. In future studies, it would be good to get a sense of the proportion of people with left-brain and right-brain strokes, so we can compare with previous studies and determine whether some of those people who had silent, right-brain stroke fell through the cracks…Before we congratulate ourselves on doing better with cholesterol lowering and BP lowering, we have to look at whether we are doing better at getting people all the way back to participation in their lives.”

Read the full article:

http://www.healio.com/cardiology/stroke/news/online/%7B9bb99d3a-32bb-4f4c-9c9a-5b81d91ba683%7D/aric-us-stroke-incidence-mortality-rates-declined-from-1987-to-2011