“In the last decade, research has shown that strategies like reducing blood pressure in the brain and reversing blood thinners can make a difference for people with intracerebral hemorrhage, but only if done promptly.” - Dr. Dar DowlatshahiMost experts agree that “time is brain” when it comes to treating stroke, but this principle hasn’t always been applied evenly to different kinds of stroke.

Now, a group of international experts is calling for change as part of a consensus statement published in the journal Stroke. After reviewing all the evidence, they conclude that strokes caused by bleeding in the brain (called intracerebral hemorrhage or ICH) should be treated with the same urgency that is typically applied to the more common ischemic strokes caused by blood clots. 

“In the last decade, research has shown that strategies like reducing blood pressure in the brain and reversing blood thinners can make a difference for people with intracerebral hemorrhage, but only if done promptly,” said co-author Dr. Dar Dowlatshahi, stroke neurologist and senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital, and professor at the University of Ottawa. 

Dr. Dowlatshahi notes that The Ottawa Hospital has already implemented these tighter standards for treating intracerebral hemorrhage, which is the deadliest kind of stroke.

 See press release for more.

Authors: Qi Li, Aleksandra Yakhkind, Anne W. Alexandrov, Andrei V. Alexandrov, Craig S. Anderson, Dar Dowlatshahi, Jennifer A. Frontera, J. Claude Hemphill, Latha Ganti, Chris Kellner, Casey May, Andrea Morotti, Adrian Parry-Jones, Kevin N. Sheth, Thorsten Steiner, Wendy Ziai, Joshua N. Goldstein and Stephan A. Mayer

Funding: This study received no specific funding. All research at The Ottawa Hospital is enabled by generous donors to The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.

The Ottawa Hospital is a leading academic health, research and learning hospital proudly affiliated with the University of Ottawa.