According to the American Stroke Association, about 700,000 Americans
suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year. On average, that means a
stroke occurs every 45 seconds. Strokes are the third -leading killer
in the United States, killing nearly 136,000 people each year. There
are not many options for patients. Most rely on physical therapy. There
are other types of experimental therapies, but they are not being
tested on patients yet.
Now, there's a new treatment called Transcranial
Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). A device generates a magnetic field, which
goes through a patient's skull and induces electric currents into the
brain. The electric currents change brain activity. TMS can improve the
motor function and also other types of cognitive functions that are
lost after a stroke like speech and memory, as well as spatial
orientation that is related to the brain function and lost after a
stroke.
Six months after a patient suffers a stroke, he reaches a plateau where he cannot further improve.
Patients in the plateau phase on TMS saw as much as a 50 percent improvement in function.
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Stroke fix
Circling the wave with magnetic waves can help improve brain activity after a stroke.
 
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"You do not expect for the improvements in this phase, so this
treatment can be considered successful,� neurologist Dr. Felipe Fregni,
of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston said. �"This
treatment can improve [patients'] quality of life because if we improve
their speech, their motor function, it's easier to then adapt to
society. We don't know if we are going to be able to recover all of
[patients'] function. But at least we can improve their function after
the stroke. One important aspect is that if we couple the effects of
this treatment with other types of therapies such as physical therapy,
speech therapy, we might be able to improve even further their function
after the stroke."
When a person has a stroke, he loses a part of his
brain, which causes a decrease in brain activity. Because of that, the
healthy hemisphere will increase its activity. This increased activity
in the healthy hemisphere hinders the function of the part of the brain
that suffered the stroke. All of the brain's resources are then
directed to the healthy hemisphere, and the part of the brain that
suffered the stroke doesn't have other resources to recover its
function and activity. There is an imbalance in brain activity between
the hemispheres.
TMS helps decrease the activity in the healthy hemisphere to allow the affected hemisphere to increase its function.
One significant side effect of brain stimulation is
that it can cause seizures. The likelihood of triggering a seizure is
greater if the affected hemisphere is stimulated, compared to the
unaffected hemisphere.
As of now, patients must go to the hospital to receive
TMS. However, Fregni says, one alternative to this is the possibility
of implanting electrodes in patients' brains, so the electrodes can
keep the brain stimulated for much longer.
