Should Mini Strokes/TIAs be Renamed?
Mini strokes are also called transient ischemic attacks, or TIAs, a term that requires a great deal of medical sophistication to be understood, and which cannot be expected to convey a meaningful message to the general public.
So in reality, neither of these terms is useful at conveying the ominous nature of this awful vascular event, which I feel is critical when one needs to find the motivation to get serious about decreasing one's stroke risk factors. After all, if all the symptoms disappeared and I am feeling great, why bother?
Do you think that it would be useful to your understanding of mini strokes/TIAs, and of the impact that these seemingly benign episodes can have on your life, to rename mini strokes with a term that more clearly conveys the potential implications for your overall health? I favor the term "pre-stroke" because I feel that it conveys the idea that feeling stroke symptoms for many minutes or hours is something which is likely to happen in sequence with something else, something as awful as a deadly stroke. Taken in this context, stroke symptoms are hard to accept as "mini" or just "transient".
Please submit your vote below and leave your thoughts behind for further discussion. Thanks for your participation.
Recommended reading:
Six Easy Tips to Stay Stroke-Free
Strokes and Dementia
Stroke-Induced Seizures
Comments
I voted no. This is because I think it would only add confusion to a term that perhaps is not very well explained by health care providers. With proper education from doctors and nurses, people who have had TIA’a or are at risk for them, can learn how to reduce their risk factors. Of course, there are always going to be non-compliant people, who will not change their lifestyle, no matter what. Those people need a wake-up call, and don’t know if education is the only answer for them.
I also voted no. By your numbers, only 20-25% of people go on to have full strokes within a year. Pre-stroke sounds frightening for the 75-80% who don’t.
I agree that “mini-stroke” isn’t the best. I favor “small stroke.” There’s a big difference between the two “little” words.
Hi Marcia. I understand your point, and I agree with the fact that pre-stroke sounds frightening. But I think it’s worth conveying how frightening the situation can be, unless something is conscientiously done about it. Most people become complacent about risk factors and they ought to know how frightening the odds are and one should be consistent by using a vocabulary that emphasizes clearly how horrible those odds are.
Discussing the prognosis of a TIA with a patient should leave him/her with the message that there is an urgent need to change lifestyle, and work hard to lower stroke risk factors.
The term “small stroke” denotes the volume of a real stroke (deficits that last long term). Mini strokes, describe an event, which lasts
IMO, mini-stroke is the best term. I don’t like TIA or pre-stroke, because they both make it sound like you didn’t have a stroke at all. My 23-year old best friend had a mini-stroke after giving birth to her son as a result of her doctor’s mistake, and now she is at much greater risk for another stroke. Because of this increased risk she is afraid to have another child, and can never again use hormonal birth control (like the pill, patch, etc.) I hated that they called it a TIA. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…. To be honest, we just refer to it as “the stroke” when we discuss it.
I think calling it a mini-stroke, or simply a stroke is important to convey the importance of making lifestyle changes. For those that do not go on to have another stroke, they are still at risk for other vascular events (heart disease, peripheral vascular disease) due to the underlying condition that caused the mini-stroke in the first place.