Finger-to-Nose Test

Posterior Strokes are Less Common & Get Slower Care

Stroke is the second leading cause of death in the world and one of the major causes of serious disability. A stroke can occur in the front or back part of the brain. Most of the strokes occur in the anterior part of the brain as primary blood flow happens here with the aid of a pair of carotid arteries. One in in five strokes happen at the back portion of the brain which gets blood flow mostly from two vertebral arteries situated at the back of the neck.

Stroke is synonymous with the acronym F.A.S.T which stands for the symptoms of stroke such as face dropping, arm weakness, speech difficulty and time to call ambulance and all these symptoms are common in strokes that happen in both regions of the brain. The subtle difference is that symptoms are milder in back-of-the-brain strokes and present along with vertigo, nausea, vomiting, coordination and balance difficulty and partial vision loss/double vision. Read more on stroke and its F.A.S.T symptoms at www.firsteatright.com.

Posterior Strokes Take a Longer Time to be Diagnosed
In general, posterior stroke patients sometimes get slower care and paramedical training can improve their recognition speed. When paramedics were trained in finger-to-nose test assessment, they were able to diagnose double the number of posterior strokes. The test asked patients to touch their nose and then extend the same finger to touch the examiner’s finger repeating the action continuously without any difficulty.

One study compared the results of paramedics who recognized stroke with the help of a 30-minute online training session in stroke screening with that of those who received an additional in-person training in the ‘finger-to-nose’ test. This comparison proved that:
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• Paramedics who were trained in the test could recognize 12 out of 16 posterior strokes (75%), whereas a year before training, they recognized only 9 of 26 stokes (36%).
• Paramedics without the training recognized 13 of 29 posterior strokes (46%). A year before, they could recognize only 10 of 36 strokes (28%).