A new study published in Neurology on Wednesday shows a stark difference in stroke rates between black and white adults — and highlights the age at which those groups of patients tend to experience those strokes.
The researchers, who looked at stroke trends from 1993 to 2015 at hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky, found that the overall stroke rate for all races decreased from 230 to 188 cases per 100,000 people.
“We saw a reduction in the incidence of stroke over a 22-year period in black adults. We haven’t seen that in previous periods of research,” said study author Dr. Tracy Madsen, associate professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology at Brown University. CNN. “It’s just that the difference is still there.”
The difference, according to the study, was that the rate per 100,000 black adults decreased from 349 to 311, while for whites the rate decreased from 215 to 170.
Madsen’s study also found that stroke affects blacks 10 years younger than whites. The average age of whites who had a stroke dropped from 72 to 71, while the average age of blacks who had a stroke decreased from 66 to 62.
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“These differences are a major ongoing public health concern,” Madsen said American news. “It is clear that more work is needed to solve systemic and political problems, as well as factors at the level of service providers and patients. These findings are a clear, urgent call for concrete efforts to build more equitable ways of preventing and caring for stroke.”
A woman named Leslie Jordan, who is black, is advocating for stroke awareness after suffering a stroke shortly after the birth of her son.
She told CNN that she was diagnosed with preeclampsia — a condition that causes high blood pressure — during her pregnancy. After giving birth, she was in so much pain that she “felt as if someone had set fire to my body”. Medicines did not help her, and two days later she had a stroke.
“I was completely paralyzed. I could not see, walk or speak. I couldn’t move,” Jordan told the newspaper. “I didn’t have the chance to go through labor because I had to fight for my life to survive so I could walk and talk and be here today to be a mom to my son.”
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Jordan said she was very disoriented after the stroke.
“I didn’t know I had given birth,” she admitted. “I thought, ‘Is this my child?'”
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Five years later, Jordan said she continues to recover from her stroke, which is why she has dedicated her life to educating others about the signs and effects of stroke.
Jordan said CNN it is important to check blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
“The reason I’m such an advocate for this is because I don’t want what happened to me to happen to any other black woman,” she said. “I want him to finish with me.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education