Mumbai, June 15 (IANS) Every 20 seconds, one Indian suffers a brain stroke, or three every minute, and the numbers are increasing alarmingly due to changing lifestyles.

At this rate, around 1.54 million Indians are affected by strokes every year and the worse is 90 per cent of stroke patients failed to reach hospital on time.

The lifetime risk of stroke after the age of 55 is 1 in 5 for women and 1 in 6 for men.

These revelations came at the ongoing 3-day Fourth Congress of Society of Neuro Vascular Intervention (SNVICON) Mumbai 2019, with international participation, here on Saturday.

Prominent speakers said the message was simple but alarming - that in India, the numbers of brain strokes are increasing and it would not be wrong to say they are "life-style related".

Two top Bollywood actors - Jackie Shroff and Sanjay Dutt - came out in support of India's neurological fraternity to spread the message and awareness that "stroke is beatable".

Breach Candy Hospital's Senior Consultant Neurosurgeon and Interventional Neurosurgeon Dr Anil P. Karapurkar said that like a healthy heart, a healthy brain is important, for which precautions need to be taken.

"In case of a heart attack, it is either you are gone or you recover. In case of a brain stroke, you may be gone, you may recover and come to normal, or you become dependent for life," Karapurkar warned.

He explained that in case of a heart attack, there are half a dozen basic symptoms such as chest pain, breathlessness, pain in left shoulder and upper abdomen, but in case of strokes, symptoms may vary depending on which side of the brain is affected.

"Stroke is a sudden loss of function of a part of the body. It can happen out of the blue. The simple rule to follow in case of a stroke is - 'BE FAST' - Balance, Eyes, Face, Arms, Speech, Time," he advised.

If a person suffers from problems in balancing, hoarseness in voice, sudden loss of vision, drops an object, giddiness, the first thing is to rush him to hospital without wasting time.

Karapurkar cautioned that treatment for brain strokes cannot start at home and a CT Scan or a MRI Scan is necessary, and since 2015, doctors follow a protocol of CT plus angio or MRI plus angio to tackle such cases.

The neurological fraternity is now contemplating launching a massive outreach programme with family doctors and general practitioners to create more awareness about how to deal with brain stroke emergencies.

Some of the other prominent speakers included medicos P. S. Ramani, Dileep R. Yavagal, Orlando Diaz, Abhidha Shah, Sukhdeep Khawar, Philippe Mercier and Nitin N. Dange.

The SNVICON also saw the latest technologies being deployed for treatment of stroke. A new web device was also launched.

Some of the major subjects covered are neurovascular anatomy, understanding of cerebral artery and 3D anatomy to understand a person's condition and treatment better, 3D spine vascular anatomy as a booming field with more to come.

--IANS qn/prs