How many strokes are caused by atrial fibrillation?
Dr. Houmsse: Stroke, by definition, is an abrupt insult to the brain function, which results in neurologic impairment or loss of function, like loss / impairment of motor activities (paralysis), loss / impairment of speech, vision or other sensory activities. Stroke is caused either by a complete occlusion of one or more brain blood vessels by a clot that formed usually outside the brain (it is usually referred to as an ischemic stroke and account for 85% of all strokes) or bleeding around or inside the brain (it is usually referred to as a hemorrhagic stroke and accounts for 15% of all strokes) Stoke could be also either transient when the neurologic impairment lasts less than 24 hour [it is also referred as transient ischemic stroke (TIA) or mini-stroke] or permenant when the neurologic impairment lasts more than 24 hours. Since atrial fibrillation could result in a clot formation as mentioned above, therefore this could result in an ischemic stroke. Then the answer to your question
