Vladimir Hachinski and Larissa Hachinski
Toronto: Key Porter Books; 2003 144 pp. $19.95 (paper) ISBN 1-55263-125-7
Rating: ***
Audience: Stroke survivors and their caregivers, family and friends
Content: Each year more than half a million North Americans experience strokes. Many thousand need rehabilitation. During such a crisis, friends and families must navigate through a maze of confusion and emotional upset and still try to understand stroke and recovery. Neurologist Vladimir Hachinski and writer Larissa Hachinski provide many answers in this book. In clear language, they help readers understand the various kinds of stroke and how they can affect physical functioning, thinking and emotions. Helpful and detailed information about rehabilitation is also included.
This book is for everyone affected by stroke — patients, their family members, friends and caregivers. Written for the lay person, it provides solid data on stroke and a detailed review of current practice in stroke rehabilitation. The emotional impact of stroke is specifically considered.
The chapters on hypertension, smoking, alcohol and exercise provide general guidelines for the implementation of treatment strategies, but they are not intended to include the detail one might find in a clinical handbook.
Strengths: This text, a father–daughter collaboration, emphasizes the fact that stroke alters the entire family, not just the individual. An excellent quick- reference for those with pressing questions about stroke and stroke recovery, it answers many of the questions asked by patients and their loved ones. Topics include how strokes occur and what happens to the brain, major types of stroke and their effects, cognitive changes, speech impairment, limb weakness, swallowing difficulties, recovery and rehabilitation, and stroke prevention.
Limitations: More information in the area of stroke prevention could be useful in educating families and caregivers in the hope of reducing the burden of stroke and its aftermath. Whether health care workers will succeed in reaching even moderate stroke-reduction goals remains an open question.
A further challenge in writing about stroke is the fact that its epidemiology is changing, as are lifestyle trends and stroke-prevention stratgies. Data from early stroke registries are now anachronistic, and theories of stroke pathogenesis have undergone a sea-change over the past decade or so.
Cinder Inglis Research Assistant Stroke Research FASTER Coordinating Centre Foothills Medical Centre Department of Clinical Neurosciences Calgary, Alta.
This book is available through your local book retailer, or through the publisher at www.keyporter.com
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Items reviewed are rated on a 4-star scale (4 = excellent)