Silent stroke or silent cerebral infarction is a stroke that doesn’t result in any noticeable symptoms but causes brain damage and is common in people over 60, especially those with high blood pressure. Silent stroke is a risk factor for future strokes and is linked to memory and thinking problems and could result in dementia.
A recent study followed 477 people age 60 to 64 for four years. At the beginning of the study 7.8 percent of the participants had the silent lacunar infarctions, small areas of damage to the brain seen on MRI that never caused obvious symptoms. They occur when blood flow is blocked in one of the arteries leading to areas deep within the brain, such as the putamen or the thalamus. By the end of the study, an additional 1.6 percent of the participants had developed “silent” strokes.
People with high blood pressure were 60 percent more likely to have silent strokes than those with normal blood pressure. Also, people with another type of small brain damage called white matter hyperintensities were nearly five times as likely to have silent strokes as those without the condition. The study conluded that high blood pressure is a major treatable risk factor for silent stroke.
References:
1. Perminder S. Sachdev, et al. Prevalence, incidence, and risk factors of lacunar infarcts in a community sample. Neurology, 2009, 73: 266 – 272.
