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How can the doctors say an Alzheimer’s patient suffered a stroke, and estimate the time?
A family member with Alzheimer’s disease experienced increased muscle weakness over a few days, but suddenly, permanent inability to walk, ever. Doctors said he had experienced a stroke five days before and 5 or 6 years old. I want to know how one would distinguish CAT indication of a stroke in the scan of an Alzheimer’s patient from just Alzheimer’s brain. Is it different densities or what? Also, as you know how long it was before the stroke? The 5yr thing seems strange, especially since he still working then. . .
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#2 written by poppy1 2 years ago
Hi Bad, My dad has this terrible disease. He also had a stroke about 6 years ago and some what they call mini strokes at least 4 of those. When they scan the Alzheimer patient for the disease where they have had regular strokes and mini strokes they show on the scan in different color. I have seen this on my dad’s brain. They pointed out where the mini strokes were and the one he had 6 years ago. Different color tells them different things about the different strokes. It all makes sense if you can see the scan while they are doing it. It’s really weird the way these medical people can pin point things wrong with us.
A Friend.
poppy1 - Comment Feed for this Post
My father has Alzheimers and also suffered a few mild strokes. I will tell you what his doctor told us.
They can tell when a person has a stoke because a stroke damages the brain tissue. The areas of the brain affected by the stroke will show up on their equipment differently than the rest of the brain. With my dad they showed up as brighter white spots with dark areas near them (thats the now dead part of the brain)
Just like when you break a bone a stroke will leave scar tissue. (the damaged areas of the brain) The doctors can tell you basically when you broke a bone even if it happened as a child. Same thing with a stroke and the damage it caused. They can look at the tissues and see how much rewiring around the areas has happened, they know how fast the parts of the brain heal or rewire, so they can pinpoint when a stroke happened. The closer to the occurance time the better the “when it happened” diagnosis. Thats why the difference between 5 days and 5 or 6 years. People can have small strokes that effect them at the time, but they can recover from those. However those strokes should be seen as warning signs and be followed up by a doctors exam and monitoring.