Patient Power®
Get Email Alerts!
Health Topics
Stroke Health Center
Health Center Home Audio Programs Videos
Search by Keyword:
Search by Health Topic:
View all Health Topics >

Treatment Options

Program: Diagnosing and Treating Pediatric Stroke
<< Previous   1   2   3   4   5   Next >>

Andrew Schorr:

From what I understand, what you've assembled there at UCSF is really that type of comprehensive team, and someone would be hard pressed to find that anywhere else. So for someone listening where this is suspected or their child is affected by it, what hope do you have now that there are treatment options that can really make a difference?

Dr. Fullerton:

There are many treatment options, and it actually does depend very much on the cause of the stroke, and so when we deal with children who have blood vessel abnormalities for instance, we can offer medical treatment with an antithrombotic agent, something as simple as aspirin, or at other times forms of heparin that we use in children, and then other children are actually going to be benefited by surgical interventions, and so there are different bypass procedures that we can do to improve blood flow to the brain. Another thing that is a similar issue kind of parallel are those children who have hemorrhagic stroke, and so in general when we talk about stroke, people often think about ischemic stroke where not enough blood gets to the brain, but we also see children with hemorrhagic stroke where you have bleeding into the brain, and those children have a whole different set of etiologies to their strokes, but many of them will have underlying vascular malformations of the brain or aneurysms in the brain, and those often require treatment by a combination of therapies both endovascular therapy that's done within the blood vessels by neurointerventional radiologists, surgical therapy that is done by neurosurgeons, and also at times radiation therapy such as gamma knife that also is done in combination between our neurosurgeons and radiation oncologists.

Andrew Schorr:

And you have all that at UCSF?

Dr. Fullerton:

We have all that at UCSF, that's right, and we've basically developed a team approach where we see each child individually and then discuss the case as a group and review all the imaging as a group and then decide as a group what we think are the best treatment options for a child.

Andrew Schorr:

Now, parents have to wonder if it turns out that their child is afflicted with one of these conditions, they say, 'What did I do?' The mom may say, 'What did I do during pregnancy to cause this?' Should they take any of the blame? Should they feel guilty about this? What do we know from a scientific point of view now?

Dr. Fullerton:

There's definitely no reason that a mother should feel guilty if her child has had a stroke. There is nothing that a mother could do to predict this. There's nothing that a mother could do to prevent this. I think the one exception would be illicit use of certain drugs during pregnancy. We know that drugs like cocaine and amphetamines used during pregnancy can increase the risk of stroke in a baby, but outside of that setting, there's absolutely nothing that a mother could do during a pregnancy to either increase or decrease that baby's risk of having a stroke.

<< Previous   1   2   3   4   5   Next >>