PETALING JAYA: With increasing incidents of stroke affecting those aged below 40, people should be on their guard for symptoms and seek prompt medical attention, medical experts have advised.
Interventional cardiologist and physician Dr Wong Teck Wee said if a stroke patient receives medical attention within three hours, the effects can be significantly mitigated with medication to dissolve the blood clot.
However, if left untreated for over 24 hours, it will worsen the brain damage, he cautioned.
He said the most common cause of stroke was blockage of blood vessels to the brain, which was the cause of up to 90% of strokes, adding that the less common ones included bleeding due to a burst artery in the brain.
“Signs of a stroke include a lopsided face, problems swallowing, blurred eyesight and numbness in the body,” he added.
Dr Wong said headaches, though common for most people, can be a dangerous indicator of a stroke.
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“If one gets persistent headaches, even when going to sleep, it is a sign that something is not right,” he added.
Other signs of a dangerous headache is when the headache intensifies during defecating and if it causes nausea.
“This may show that there is build-up of pressure around the brain,” he said.
When such symptoms exist, seek immediate medical attention, he added.
National Stroke Association of Malaysia head of rehabilitation Kathiravan Tangaraju Anthony said more strokes were affecting those aged between 30 and 40 years.
He said he noticed the increase in younger stroke patients since the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This can be the result of unhealthy diets and lifestyles, as well as poor stress management,” he added.
Kathiravan said younger stroke patients were more likely to recover faster and return to normal daily activities compared with older patients, though this depended on the severity of the stroke.
This was because younger patients have better neuroplasticity and were less likely to have underlying diseases, he said.
Consultant physician and neurologist Dr Yong Fee Mann said prevention was always better than cure.
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“It will be too late (to act) when symptoms of a stroke occur,” she said.
She confirmed that there was an increase in stroke incidents affecting those aged between 35 and 39, adding that this was the trend over the past decade.
“Many young people have poor lifestyle habits, such as smoking, vaping, eating unhealthy foods and sleeping late.
“If these risk factors are controlled, the chances of a stroke can be significantly reduced,” she added.
Dr Yong said high blood pressure, obesity, lack of exercise and diabetes were some of the main causes of stroke.
However, she noted that for stroke patients under 30 years old including teenagers, the cause is usually due to congenital disease and autoimmune diseases such as lupus, where the body attacks its own healthy cells.
These cases are much rarer, she added.
On Dec 2, a 17-year-old student died a day before her SPM exam due to a ruptured blood vessel in her brain, leading to a haemorrhage.
According to reports, she had been experiencing headaches for at least a month but did not tell her parents as she did not want to worry them. The victim had scored 10As for her SPM trial.
