Facts about strokes in Canada

If you had asked me about strokes a couple months ago I would have likely been fairly obvious in terms of how little I know about strokes and our precious brain. I would have told you that strokes are a blood clot that paralyzes senior citizens. If I handed in that quiz I would have failed.

Let me share a bit of information...

[thanks to the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation]

...by the way, tomorrow I will share where I fit in to this statistical picture (hint: I did not die)...

Types

• About 80% of strokes are called "ischemic" which is caused by the interruption of blood flow to the brain due to a blood clot.
• About 20% of strokes are called "hemorrhagic" which are situations of uncontrolled bleeding in the brain

Deaths

• Stroke is the third leading cause of death in Canada. Six percent of all deaths in Canada are due to stroke.
• Each year, nearly 14,000 Canadians die from stroke.
• Each year, more women than men die from stroke.

Prevalence

• There are over 50,000 strokes in Canada each year. That’s one stroke every 10 minutes.
• For every 100,000 Canadian children under the age of 19, there are 6.7 strokes.
• About 300,000 Canadians are living with the effects of stroke.2
• After age 55, the risk of stroke doubles every 10 years.
• A stroke survivor has a 20% chance of having another stroke within 2 years.

Effects

Of every 100 people who have a stroke:

• 15 die (15%)
• 10 recover completely (10%)
• 25 recover with a minor impairment or disability (25%)
• 40 are left with a moderate to severe impairment (40%)
• 10 are so severely disabled they require long-term care (10%)

For every minute delay in treating a stroke, the average patient loses 1.9 million brain cells, 13.8 billion synapses, and 12 km of axonal fibres.

Each hour in which treatment does not occur, the brain loses as many neurons as it does in almost 3.6 years of normal aging.

Costs

• Stroke costs the Canadian economy $3.6 billion a year in physician services, hospital costs, lost wages, and decreased productivity (2000 statistic).
• Canadians spend a total of 3 million days in hospital because of stroke.

So this is a serious situation and the reality is that in the stroke survivor community I have met a lot of people who were closer to my age than you might want to hear (I'm not too shy to tell you I'm 36)... so please take your fingers out of your ears and stop pretending I'm not talking to you. I am looking you right in the eye and telling you the truth. When you started reading this blog it meant that you may encounter some painful truths, but they might help you to avoid encountering an even more painful life-changing experience.

Besides, the worst possible thing you can do is to remain unaware of the situation.

See you tomorrow when I share some of the technical jargon that applies to what happened to my brain...