Children risk suffering a stroke
Children who fall heavily while climbing trees can suffer a stroke, Dr Eben Badoe, a paediatric neurologist at the Child Health Department of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, has said.
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‘A fall from a tree can cause children to suffer an injury to their blood vessels which can affect blood flow to the brain, and put them at a high risk of suffering from a stroke,’ he explained.
Dr Badoe, who was speaking in an interview with the Junior Graphic, advised children to immediately inform their parents whenever they fall particularly from trees.
He further said that parents needed to immediately seek adequate professional advice for their children when they became aware of such accidents involving them.
Stroke, according to Dr Badoe, is a blockage that occurs in the blood vessels of the brain and may lead to difficulty in talking, as well as affect one’s ability to see well and move some parts of the body.
According to him, strokes do not normally occur in children, pointing out that one out of every 15,000 children suffers a stroke. The condition, however, he explained, is 250 times more common in children with the sickle cell disease.
Aside from head and neck traumas, Dr Badoe mentioned other risk factors that can lead to strokes in children to include heart diseases, specifically cyanotic heart disease (a condition which causes children not to receive enough oxygen ), children with sickle cell and chicken pox.
Other factors are tonsillitis, all kinds of infections, high blood cholesterol and a family history of stroke.
‘If a child has recently had chicken pox, it can cause some of the blood vessels in and around the brain to clot and thereby cause them to suffer stroke. Infections also make the blood more likely to clot, thereby putting children at risk of stroke,’’ he explained.
In Ghana, he said the most common causes of stroke in children are heart and sickle cell diseases.
Dr Badoe said stroke in children with sickle cell often has no warning signs and, therefore, advised that the moment the performance of such children in school declines or they complain of neck pain and headaches or start to limp, parents have to become alert and take them to the hospital for a thorough check.
He said when the signs of stroke are detected early in children, for those whose condition is due to heart disease, it is often recommended that they undergo a corrective heart surgery to prevent the stroke and for those whose situation is due to sickle cell, they are put on regular blood transfusions.
In situations where the stroke actually occurs, Dr Badoe said, such children are able to regain the use of the affected parts of their bodies through supportive care and therapies such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy.