Treating stroke victims with magnetic brain stimulation

Looks like better treatment for at least some type of strokes is becoming available by way of the emerging technology of magnetic brain stimulation.

According to a clinical trial brain stimulation reduces "post-stroke neglect".

An article at MedPage Today says:

As many as 40% of stroke patients develop hemispatial neglect, which refers to the inability to recognize or respond to stimuli on the side opposite to the brain infarction. The syndrome is particularly disabling to patients who have unilateral strokes of the right hemisphere.

Here are the results of the trial.

Post-stroke hemispatial neglect improved significantly after a two-week course of magnetic stimulation of the affected brain area, according to results of a small clinical trial.

The degree of neglect improved by 16% after two weeks and by 23% after one month, as assessed by a standardized behavioral inattention test (BIT).

In contrast, patients treated with sham stimulation had no improvement in hemispatial neglect, Giacomo Koch, MD, PhD, of the Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome, and co-authors reported in the Jan. 3 issue of Neurology.

"These findings suggest that a two-week course of continuous theta-burst stimulation over the left hemisphere posterior parietal cortex may be a potential effective strategy in accelerating recovery from visuospatial neglect in subacute stroke patients, possibly counteracting the hyperexcitability of the left hemisphere parieto-frontal circuits," they wrote in conclusion.

"This study provides class III evidence that left posterior parietal cortex theta-burst stimulation improves hemispatial neglect for up to two weeks after treatment," the authors added.

According to Wikipedia, cerebral infarction is this:

A cerebral infarction is the ischemic kind of stroke due to a disturbance in the blood vessels supplying blood to the brain. It can be atherothrombotic or embolic.[1] Stroke caused by cerebral infarction should be distinguished from two other kinds of stroke: cerebral hemorrhage and subarachnoid hemorrhage. A cerebral infarction occurs when a blood vessel that supplies a part of the brain becomes blocked or leakage occurs outside the vessel walls. This loss of blood supply results in the death of that area of tissue. Cerebral infarctions vary in their severity with one third of the cases resulting in death.

The MedPage Today article is here.