First aid at a stroke

Stroke call an acute disorder of blood circulation of a brain. This extremely dangerous state posing direct threat to human life. Unfortunately, the stroke is one of the most frequent acute pathologies demanding urgent treatment. From that, how fast first aid will also be qualitatively given at a stroke, a lot of things depend.

One of the main problems at a stroke is that it quite often passes unnoticed, pathological changes attract attention too late. It is important to know symptoms of a stroke not to pass it.

Types of strokes and their signs

There are two types of strokes – hemorrhagic and ischemic. The first arises when there is a rupture of a vessel, and blood from it streams in a brain ("hemorrhage" is translated with Latin as hemorrhage). The ischemic stroke happens when the gleam of a vessel is blocked by blood clot, and blood ceases to come to the site of a brain fed by this vessel ("ischemia" in transfer means an anemia).

The pathology arising at the same time – a stroke – is caused by the same reason, lack of blood supply of the site of a brain similar there can be also effects. Hemorrhagic and ischemic strokes differ in development time – the first is shown suddenly, the second – with gradual increase of symptoms. First aid at a stroke of ischemic type quite often comes with lateness because symptoms of a stroke are not distinguished in time.

The stroke has the following symptoms:

1. Headache of high intensity. Patients quite often describe it as the most severe and intolerable pain in the life;
2. Numbness of any body part – either sudden, or gradually accruing;
3. Disturbance of the speech. The speech of the person becomes greased, reminding the speech at alcoholic intoxication;
4. The sharp or accruing deterioration in sight, loss of fields of vision, flashing of "front sights" before eyes, blackout;
5. The curvature of features, is most often bent a mouth, there can be a stiffened grimace on a face;
6. Lack of coordination of movements. The movements become debalanced, emergence of "drunk" gait is possible;
7. Balance loss. It can be not obligatory for long - the person can fall and rise quickly enough, but if there was a sudden loss of balance, it has to guard concerning a stroke;
8. Loss of consciousness;
9. Nausea, vomiting.

The first seven signs are most characteristic of a stroke. Even emergence of one of them is a reason for a call of ambulance, and first-aid treatment in its expectation. You remember, the first three hours are especially significant – extremely important that during this period the victim was hospitalized and began to receive adequate treatment.

First-aid treatment at a stroke

If there is a suspicion of a stroke, you should not wait until it is confirmed by several signs or until the condition of the patient worsens even more. It is necessary to organize immediately delivery of the patient in hospital. Waiting for such opportunity an algorithm of first-aid treatment at a stroke following:

• To lay or seat the person in a comfortable position;
• To be convinced that to the victim nothing prevents to breathe: to help to take out plug-in prostheses from a mouth (if they are), to weaken hard clothes, to provide intake of fresh air to the room. If the patient fainted, he should be laid on one side that it did not choke with emetic masses. Contrary to popular belief, injured from a stroke it is possible to move, it is impossible to move the head only too sharply;
• To record as much as possible exact time of a stroke, whenever possible to measure arterial pressure and to write down these figures to tell the doctor;
• It is strictly forbidden to give to drink and feed the victim, and also to give him drugs, in operation which you are not sure.

Remember that there is a possibility of gradual increase of symptoms therefore before arrival of ambulance it is not necessary to leave the person of one even if he claims that he feels not bad.