MRI can determine time of stroke

PARIS, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Brain magnetic resonance imaging could help determine the time of stroke onset, a French researcher said.

Lead researcher Dr. Catherine Oppenheim of the Universite Paris Descartes reported MRI may help increase the number of stroke patients eligible for a potentially lifesaving drug tissue plasminogen activator that dissolves the clot but can only be administered within 4 1/2 hours of stroke onset.

"As many as a quarter of all stroke patients cannot be given tPA because they wake up with stroke symptoms or are unable to tell their doctor when their stroke began," Descartes said in a statement.

The study, published in the journal Radiology, found radiologists using only information from MRI were able to predict with more than 90 percent accuracy which patients had experienced stroke symptoms longer than 3 hours.

"With the use of MRI, all stroke patients could be managed urgently, not just those patients with a known onset of symptoms," Oppenheim said.

Oppenheim and colleagues reviewed data from 130 consecutive patients -- 77 men and 53 women -- with acute ischemic stroke whose time of stroke onset was well defined and who also underwent MRI.