There are two kinds of treatment for a stroke:

• Emergency or early treatment (which you get in the first few hours or days after a stroke)

• Long-term treatment (which you are given to try to reduce the chance of having another stroke).

In this section we cover emergency or early treatment. Your doctor may call it acute treatment. To learn more about long-term treatment, see Stroke prevention.

Key points about treating a stroke

• If you think you're having a stroke, or have had one, get to hospital straight away. A stroke is an emergency. Many people think there's no point in getting medical help for a stroke. In fact, the most important thing you can do to limit the damage from a stroke is to get medical attention straight away.

• The symptoms of a stroke can include sudden numbness or weakness (especially on one side of your body), sudden confusion or trouble speaking, sudden problems seeing, sudden dizziness, loss of balance, trouble walking, or a bad headache.

• If you're cared for in a specialised stroke unit, you're more likely to make a good recovery.

• In hospital, you may be given fluid through a tube. Some people need a tube that's put into their mouth to help them breathe.

• Taking aspirin within two days of having an ischaemic stroke (the type that happens when a blood vessel is blocked) reduces your chance of dying from the stroke. It can reduce the amount of disability you have after surviving the stroke. It also improves your chance of making a complete recovery.

• Clot-dissolving (thrombolytic) drugs can reduce your chances of being disabled after a stroke caused by a blood clot. The sooner you get this treatment, the better it works. Unfortunately, these drugs can harm some people by causing bleeding in the brain. Also, it can be difficult for doctors to tell who will be helped and who will be harmed.

Treatments for a stroke

A stroke needs different treatment depending on whether it was caused by a blood clot or by bleeding in the brain. We've looked separately at treatments for these different kinds of stroke.

• Emergency treatment for an ischaemic stroke (caused by a blood clot)

• Emergency treatment for a haemorrhagic stroke (caused by bleeding)