Bleeding stroke victims get less treatment

WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- A new study says U.S. patients with a "bleeding" stroke are significantly less likely to receive medications and counseling than those with clot-caused strokes.

The three-year study involved 662 hospitals with entries for 149,089 ischemic, or clot-caused, strokes or transient ischemic attacks -- a "mini-stroke" -- 17,195 intracerebral hemorrhages, or bleeding strokes, and 5,503 subarachnoid hemorrhages, which occur when a blood vessel on the brain's surface ruptures and bleeds between the brain and the skull.

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston found 77 percent of ischemic stroke patients received cholesterol-lowering medications at hospital discharge, compared with 67 percent of ICH patients and 62 percent of those with subarachnoid hemorrhages, according to a presentation at the American Heart Association's eighth Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke in Washington.

Seventy-one percent of patients with ischemic stroke were counseled about the risk of cigarette smoking, compared with 63 percent of those with intracerebral hemorrhages and 55 percent of those with subarachnoid hemorrhages.

Researchers also found less disparity in weight-loss management, with 36 percent of those with ischemic stroke, 33 percent of those with intracerebral hemorrhages and 27 percent of those with subarachnoid hemorrhages receiving some kind of intervention.