Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. have a first stroke each year.
Newly updated recommendations spell out methods for changing that. The new guidelines from the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association, published Monday in the journal Stroke, aim to prevent stroke throughout a person's life via preventive care and healthy lifestyle behaviors. The recommendations, last updated a decade ago, have new guidance for preventing stroke in women and include a new emphasis on social drivers of health.
The guidelines urge health care professionals to screen people for risk factors such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, high blood sugar and obesity. They also recommend raising public awareness about the benefits of healthy lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking, increasing physical activity, improving dietary habits and getting better sleep. "This guideline is important because new discoveries have been made since the last update 10 years ago," Dr.
Cheryl D. Bushnell, who led the panel of experts that wrote the new guidelines, said in a news release . She is a professor and vice chair of research in the department of neurology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
"Implementing the recommendations in this guideline would make it possible to significantly reduce the risk of people having a first stroke," Bushnell said. "Most strategies that we recommend for preventing stroke will also help reduce the risk.