Medical Term for Stroke: CVA and the Words Around It

Ischemic and hemorrhagic: two roads to the same medical term for stroke

Ischemic strokes make up most strokes. The difference matters because treatment points in opposite directions: an ischemic stroke may be treated with a clot dissolving medicine or a procedure to pull out the clot, while a bleeding stroke must not receive clot dissolving drugs. A CT head scan is usually the first test that tells them apart.

Stroke versus TIA

A transient ischemic attack, often called a mini stroke, causes stroke symptoms that go away, usually within minutes to an hour, without lasting damage on brain imaging. It is not harmless. A TIA is a warning that a full stroke may follow, so it is treated as an emergency and usually leads to a quick workup.

Because no one can tell in the first minutes whether symptoms will pass, the advice for both is the same: call emergency services at once. The old idea of waiting to see if it clears up costs brain tissue.

Signs to recognize quickly

Many public health groups teach the letters BE FAST to spot a stroke.

• Balance: sudden loss of balance or coordination
• Eyes: sudden vision loss or double vision
• Face: one side of the face droops
• Arm: one arm drifts down or is weak
• Speech: slurred or confused speech
• Time: call 911 right away and note when symptoms started

That start time becomes LKW, last known well, in the chart. Few details in the record carry more weight, because the time window shapes which treatments are possible.

Decoding a stroke team note

Other common pieces include hemiparesis, weakness on one side of the body; hemiplegia, paralysis on one side; aphasia, trouble with language; and dysarthria, slurred speech from weak muscles. Left brain strokes tend to affect the right side of the body and language, while right brain strokes affect the left side.

Older and alternate terms

Apoplexy is an old word for stroke that still appears in historical texts. Cerebral infarction is the precise name for brain tissue death from an ischemic stroke, matching myocardial infarction for a heart attack. Brain attack was coined to stress the same urgency people feel about heart attacks.

Students should remember that CVA has a second meaning in exams of the back, costovertebral angle, as in CVA tenderness when checking the kidneys. Context almost always makes the meaning obvious. For more plain words with their clinical names, see the medical terminology guide.