Prevention and treatment of ischemic stroke and myocardial infarction: not birds of a feather?

Corresponding author: Dr. Haiyun Wu, Institute of Geriatric Cardiology, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing100853, China; Tel:(+86)010-68163229; Email:[email protected] Both acute myocardial infarction (MI) and acute ischemic stroke are leading causes of death and disability in our world—the former in most American and European countries and the latter in many of Asian countries.1 Although these common acute vascular disorders share some similarities, there are important differences regarding pathophysiology, diagnostic evaluation, and management. The differences between acute MI and acute ischemic stroke are manifold, and imply different prevention and treatment strategies. Given that the paradoxical differences in incidence density of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke between different populations has long been known, and the great burden placed by these disorders on human being, one may wonder at the paucity of literature to compare them. In this issue of the Journal of Geriatric Cardiology, we publish two articles2,3 addressing the similarity and differences of CHD and stroke to highlight this important question in medicine. Wei et al.3 performed cerebral angiography and coronary angiography in 34 patients who had both coronary and cerebral ischemia related symptoms and found significant correlation between the severity of these two vascular beds; Yu and Wu2 analyzed data of patients admitted to their hospitals because of either acute stroke or acute MI, and they found that acute stroke patients were significantly older than acute MI patients while hypertension was more common in acute stroke patients than in acute MI patients.