Cerebrovascular Accident

Angelica Eastman

Case Study: Cerebrovascular Accident

A&P Mary Orff

December 6, 2014

Samuel is s 52 year old male that is moderately obese and is a regular two pack a day smoker of cigarettes. He awoke one morning with a weakness on the right side of his body, a tad confused and is also seeing double, as well as a slurring of his speech. Samuel attempted to walk and stumbled, as well as fell. His wife was worried and was suspecting that he had a stroke so she called 911. Samuel was transported to the nearest emergency medical center and was then evaluated for his symptoms.

In order to better understand the possibility of Samuel having a stroke, understanding a few key words is necessary to comprehend the condition. Ischemia is a local loss in blood supply, and infarction is the death and or deterioration of tissue resulting from a lack of blood supply. When a stroke occurs there is almost always a local loss of blood supply that then results in tissue death or necrosis to occur, which then, depending on the area of the brain affected, can result in a loss of function in a person’s body; this function can either be motor or sensory. A stroke is also referred to as a cerebrovascular accident, which as stated above is when brain tissue is deprived of its required blood supply.

There are many signs and symptoms of a stroke, the few that Samuel exhibited were main symptoms. These among other things such as confusion and a severe headache with no known cause don’t always mean that something as severe as a stroke has occurred, but it could possibly mean that one may have. There are two forms of a stroke, the first is an ischemic stroke which is when a blood vessel that supplies blood to the brain is blocked by a blood clot, and the second is called a hemorrhagic stroke. A hemorrhagic stroke is when a blood vessel breaks open, leading to blood leaking into the brain. Blood flow is a major portion of how a stroke may or may not occur, this understanding...