Strokes in younger adults are rising

ATLANTA - For Deborah Martinez, March 13, 2018, began like any other Tuesday.

"I work at the University of Georgia, and we had a staff meeting that morning," Martinez remembers.

As the meeting ended, the then 36-year-old felt a strange sensation.

"At the moment where I assume when the clot went to the brain, I just had kind of that warm feeling run up from my feet to my head," she says.  "Really, I was just warm all over."

Talking to her coworker, one side of her face went slack, then Martinez began slurring her words.

"I said, 'Is my speech slurred,' and that's when I kind of slumped over all together," Martinez says.

Her coworker recognized she was having a stroke and called 911.  

Within minutes, paramedics had Martinez at St. Mary's Hospital in Athens, which has a stroke center.

"Within 40 minutes of my stroke, they started tPA, and within 90 minutes of the onset of the stroke, I had what's called a mechanical thrombectomy," she says.

What happened to Deborah Martinez is becoming more common.

Dr. Jonathan Grossberg, a neurointerventional surgeon at Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospitals in Atlanta, says they are seeing a dramatic rise in younger adults having strokes.

"Some studies have even said it's up to a 50% increase, in hospitalized patients," Dr. Grossberg says. "And these patients run the full gamut from mild to moderate to severe strokes."

Many experts believe unhealthy lifestyles and inactivity
are fueling the rise.

"So, people aren't getting their 30 minutes of exercise a day they should be getting," Grossberg says. "Their cholesterol is higher, they're obese, and there is still a lot of cigarette smoking, especially in the Southeast. All of these things lead to strokes."

Martinez says she was a little overweight but was otherwise active.

"You think stroke is an older person disease or happens to older people," she says.  "And, now that I'm a stroke survivor myself, I realize that's not the case at all."

Martinez had a large clot blocking blood flow to her brain.

She believes she survived because she underwent a mechanical thrombectomy to remove the clot, the same procedure Dr. Grossberg performs.

"Mechanical thrombectomy is a procedure where we go up into the brain with a small catheter, just like a heart doctor or cardiologist can put stent in your heart," Dr. Grossberg explains.  "We actually go up into the brain and pull out clots."

To stop a stroke, which can involve a clot or a bleed, doctors have to move quickly.

Clot-busting drugs like tPA have to be given in the first 3 hours, a thrombectomy in the first 24 hours, once a stroke begins.

"That's why this is so important to call 911 immediately if you think yourself or somebody else is having a stroke and to get them to a hospital," Martinez says.

Her coworker 911 call, she says, may be why she is here today.

"I'm so thankful to be alive and sitting here talking to you today," she says.

Dr. Grossberg supports "Get Ahead of Stroke," a new campaign to push states to treat strokes like they do traumas.

"As almost everyone knows if you have a bad car accident, you end up at Grady," he says.

Grossberg says EMS providers should automatically take patients with stroke symptoms to the closest Level 1 stroke center.