AUSTIN, Texas — A stroke is something that can happen at any age, at any time. Although, it's more commonly seen in older adults, knowing the warning signs can help save a life.
Austin resident Stephen Galloway is no stranger to a health crisis. As a hazmat engineer in 1991, he responded to a huge chemical spill in Galveston and suffered terrible burns and long-term health consequences, like neuropathy, awful nerve pain. This neuropathy led to Galloway also developing diabetes, which nearly caused him to go blind.
Fast-forward to March of this year, Galloway started experiencing slurred speech and weakness on one side of his body. He suspected that he could be having a stroke. Shortly after, his wife drove him to the hospital where he received a newer stroke treatment called transcarotid artery revascularization (TCAR) by vascular surgeon Dr. Taylor Smith.
"It's sort of a hybrid between a traditional open surgical procedure, where we make a small incision on the neck and we clean out the carotid artery, and another procedure where we use balloons and stents to treat the carotid artery. This sort of combines the best parts of both of those operations and makes a very safe operation for the patient with a very low stroke risk and a very low risk of heart attack or other complications around the procedure," Smith said.
According to Smith, strokes are common in people who have high blood pressure or high cholesterol, who might have diabetes or other risk factors for what we classically think of as heart disease.
"You can have events where the symptoms start off very small and go away and then they might keep coming back and they might keep building. So, somebody might be having occasional left arm weakness or numbness that comes and goes and then it slowly gets gets worse over hours, and then they might have a bigger stroke or a bigger event shortly after. So, even at the earliest signs and symptoms of a stroke, you should seek medical care," Smith said.
Symptoms of stroke can include slurred speech or facial droop and numbness and tingling of the arms or legs.
"It could be just one arm or one leg, but it's usually all going to be on the same side of the body. So, in Stephen's case, it was his left. It was to me, his right side of his body was weak. And that was coming from the left carotid artery," Smith said.
Once you seek medical attention, Smith said the emergency room will do a series of tests to try to identify the source of the stroke. It can be from a problem in the heart or in the blood vessels to the neck or in the blood vessels of the brain itself. It also can simply be due to high blood pressure.
"They'll usually get a neurologist involved and they'll look for the source of the stroke. And if the source of the stroke is thought to be the carotid arteries, the arteries that feed the brain in the neck, then that's where a vascular surgeon would get involved to see if that's something that we can repair and help prevent future strokes," Smith said.
The best thing people can do to avoid a stroke is live a healthy lifestyle. That involves no smoking, a reasonable heart-healthy diet, a good amount of exercise and trying to manage diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol with your primary care doctor with appropriate medications.
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