Brain, Vol. 127, No. 2, 452-454, 2004
© 2004 Guarantors of Brain
doi: 10.1093/brain/awh024
Book Review |
IMAGING IN STROKE
IMAGING IN STROKEBy Michael G. Hennerici
2003 London: Remedica Publishing
Price £30. ISBN 1-901346-25-0.
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Imaging has revolutionized the approach to managing stroke patients. Previously it was taught that the brain without oxygen survives for only a few minutes, and that the adult brain, unlike the developing brain, has limited powers of plasticity to recover from any acquired insult. These two dictums have been partially responsible for the all-pervasive feeling of nihilism previously surrounding stroke management. Imaging has been fundamental in exploding this dogma, allowing new concepts to evolve about aspects of acute neuronal damage and functional recovery/plasticity. With the introduction over the last 20 years of various diagnostic imaging techniques (structural imaging with CT in the 1970s and MRI in the 1980s, and especially the functional neuroimaging techniques of PET and perfusion/diffusion MR, which allows imaging of brain physiology), stroke has been redefined as a dynamic and evolving process with potential openings for acute therapy and longer-term rehabilitation.
Imaging, therefore, has become extremely important
Deparment of Neurology, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK