NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A preliminary study suggests that aggressively lowering a patient's blood pressure in the early hours of a bleeding stroke can limit its severity.
These strokes happen when a vessel in the head bursts or leaks, flooding brain tissue with blood and damaging areas that control walking, talking and other functions. More than 100,000 occur each year in the United States and half prove fatal.
The study tested this in 404 stroke patients in Asia and Australia. Researchers say additional bleeding was about one-third less in the more aggressively treated patients, and the treatment proved safe with no major side effects.
The director of Duke University Medical Center's stroke center says the finding needs to be confirmed in a larger study, but emergency doctors "will probably grab on it."
On the Net:
Stroke conference: http://www.strokeassociation.org
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