Mr. Kenyada's Neighborhood
African American Health Issues

Blacks' stroke risk greater

CDC says African Americans face 3 or 4 times
more chances of being afflicted

By M.A.J. McKenna, Atlanta Constitution

Recently Black separatist leader Khallid Muhammad died from complications of a cerebral hemorrhage, a disease that particularly threatens African Americans.

We face a risk of stroke that is four times higher than the risk faced by white people between ages 35 and 54, and three times as high as for white people between 55 and 64, according to a national study published a year ago by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Muhammad's cerebral hemorrhage, like the hemorrhagic stroke than killed Sen. Paul Coverdell of Georgia last July, was one of the less common, but unfortunately more dire, forms of stroke.

Hemorrhagic strokes, the broad name for several types of bleeding into the brain, make up only 20 percent of the 750,000 strokes in the U.S. each year. (Ischemic strokes, caused by the blockage of a blood vessel, are responsible for 80 percent.) Half of those who suffer hemorrhagic strokes die relatively quickly, while only 20 percent of those with ischemic strokes do, and many of those who survive hemorrhagic strokes are left with long-term disability.

In a cerebral hemorrhage, bleeding in the brain or between the surface of the brain and the skull places pressure on brain tissue.  The brain responds by swelling; compression against the unyielding skull causes the tissue to die.

About three-fourths of cerebral hemorrhages are caused by the stress of high blood pressure, which tears a small blood vessel, allowing blood to leak out and form a clot that presses on nearby tissue.  About one-fourth of the time, an aneurysm -- a balloon-like defect in the wall of an artery in the brain -- suddenly ruptures, allowing uncontrolled bleeding into or around the brain.

Rapid surgery can relieve increased pressure on the brain, though brain tissue that has died cannot be revived.

The vulnerability of African Americans to stroke is one of the most striking health disparities between white people and black people. Minorities in the United States have higher rates than white people of obesity, diabetes, unmedicated high blood pressure and poor nutrition, all conditions that put us in greater danger of strokes.