Which image below is the biggest attention-getter?
-OR-
The Italian sports car vs. motorcycle collision or the middle-aged mother of two whose daughter noticed her crooked smile at dinner?
How many ‘trauma junkies’ ride our ambulances and staff our Emergency Departments?
Which motivated you to become an EMS/emergency medicine provider: facial droop or rollovers with ejection?
Let’s look at current CDC mortality statistics for the United States from 2010:
Stroke:Â 129,476 deaths/year.
Motor vehicle accident deaths:Â 33,687 deaths/year.
Firearm deaths:Â 31,672 deaths/year.
There are more deaths from stroke than from auto accidents and firearms combined. In fact if we add the two up (65,359) and then account for homicide (16,259) and suicide (38,364), we still haven’t reached the total number of annual deaths from stroke. Worldwide annual stroke mortality? 6.2 million.
Now which image gets your attention?
By the way, every 40 seconds someone in the United States suffers a stroke. The average adult’s reading speed is 250 words per minute and there’s 170 words in this article. So statistically speaking by the time you reachthis word someone suffered a stroke.
