Page 8 - Seniors Today - Oct 2019

Cover Story

Life after a Stroke

If detected and acted upon on fast enough,
a stroke patient can get back to a normal life,
writes Dr Anirudh Kohli

Eighty-five-year-old Dr Susil Chandra Munshi Upon investigation on how he got a stroke, it
is one of India’s best known cardiologists. He was discovered that he had a hole in his heart!
is a practising interventional cardiologist at “An embolus had crept up to into my brain
Mumbai’s Jaslok and Breach Candy Hospitals. arteries, causing a critical blockage. This hole in
Dr Munshi has been President of the Indian the heart was from birth, but played up then. I
Cardiology Society and was awarded the got operated on by Dr Sudhansu Bhattacharya
Padma Shri by the Government of India for his to close the hole in the heart and am absolutely
contribution to the field of medicine, specifically fine now.”
cardiology.
Ten years ago, he started to slur one evening. What is a Stroke?
His speech became garbled and he just couldn’t A stroke occurs when blood supply to a part
speak. He also lost consciousness momentarily. of your brain gets reduced or interrupted thus
His daughter rushed him to the Breach Candy depriving the brain of oxygen and essential
Hospital. On arriving at the emergency medical nutrients. Within minutes, brain cells begin
services department, the doctors found that to die. That’s why a stroke is an emergency.
his right arm and leg had zero power. He had The good news is strokes can be treated and
had a full-blown stroke. A CT scan was done prevented. Prompt treatment is crucial as early
immediately and that ruled out a haemorrhage,
indicating an ischemic stroke. In view of this,
he was given a clot-busting drug intravenously
r-tPA. Within a short time, power returned to
his arm and leg as well as his speech got better.
“There was some brain swelling because of
the stroke and I was a bit drowsy for two days
but by Day 3, I had recovered fully,” he recalls. Fatty plaque narrowing artery to brain

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