Acute ischemic stroke.

Doctors have discovered that text messages could be a vital tool in diagnosing an oncoming potentially fatal stroke as type becomes garbled due to clotting within the artery.

After doctors found no visible neurological problems except a slight weakness on the right side of his face, and the patient had no trouble in handling the traditional bedside evaluation of language abilities, he was handed a smart phone and asked to type, ‘the doctor needs a new blackberry.’ Instead, he texted, ‘Tjhe Doctor nddds a new bb.’ When asked if it was correct, the researchers reported, he did not recognise any typing errors. Such strokes usually result in some form of physical impairment and can be fatal. The patient described in the Henry Ford report had sent a message to his wife shortly after midnight the night before he went to the hospital.  She described it as ‘disjointed, non-fluent, and incomprehensible.’ It said: ‘Oh baby your;’ and was followed by: ‘I am happy.’ Two minutes later: ‘I am out of it, just woke up, can't make sense, I can't even type, call if ur awake, love you.’The next day he deceased, MRI scan shows a human brain after a massive stroke.

Dr Omran Kaskar, a neurologist at Henry Ford Hospital and lead author of the research, said it illustrates how garbled texting can be the only symptom of stroke-related aphasia – a partial or sometimes total inability to form or understand language. ‘Text messaging is a common form of communication with more than 75 billion texts sent each month,’ Dr. Kaskar said. ‘Besides the time-honoured tests we use to determine aphasia in diagnosing stroke, checking for garbled texting may well become a vital tool in making such a determination. ‘He added: ‘Because text messages are always time-stamped when they’re sent, they may also help establish when the stroke symptoms were at least present or even when they began. They say that garbled messages can indicate that someone is having a stroke - even if they can talk and write normally.

This suggested to the doctors that texting could become an important part of diagnosing strokes. Researchers at the Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, U.S. have reported the case of a 40-year-old man who they suspected was having a stroke. He was able to talk normally, but was unable to see that the text messages he was sending were incoherent.

Doctors have discovered that text messages could be a 'vital tool' in diagnosing potentially fatal strokes. The patient had no problems with a routine bedside test of his language abilities – which included fluency of speech, reading and writing. However, when he was asked to type a simple text message it was garbled and he could not see the problem. Despite showing only slight facial asymmetry (one key symptom is drooping on one side) and no other symptoms, doctors were able to diagnose the man as suffering from an acute ischemic stroke, in which a clot or other blockage cuts off blood supply to part of the brain.