Educating the public and health care professionals is necessary to create a greater understanding of risk factors, symptoms, and safe treatment of stroke, also called brain attack. This brief provides answers to commonly asked questions about brain attack. The term brain attack is now used to emphasize the similarity of stroke to heart attack as a potentially life-threatening emergency requiring immediate medical attention. A brain attack occurs when blood supplied to the brain is impaired either by blockage of blood flow or hemorrhaging in or around the brain. An ischemic brain attack occurs when a blood vessel in the brain or a vessel leading to the brain becomes blocked.
Ischemia is caused by a lack of blood and oxygen in tissue.
Ischemic brain attacks account for 80 to 85 percent of all brain attacks. The rest are due to hemorrhages. Two causes of ischemic brain attack have been identified, cerebral thrombosis and cerebral embolism. Clots block the flow of blood to the brain or inside the brain in both types. In a cerebral thrombosis, a blood clot forms in a vessel within the brain itself.