Middle cerebral artery embolism and unilateral visual loss after autologous fat injection into the glabellar area.

In their recent article, 1 Wolf et al note a decrease in the severity of stroke over the three decades beginning 1953, 1963, and 1973, sequentially. It is of interest that most of this difference was seen between decades two (i.e., 1963-1973) and three (i.e., 1973-1983). This third decade was also the time when aspirin first became widely used for stroke prevention and the first trials demonstrating its efficacy were reported. We have previously questioned whether platelet antiaggregant therapy lessens the severity of stroke, 2 but subsequent placebo controlled platelet antiaggregant trials have either not settled the issue or unfortunately not even addressed it. Is there any way that Dr. Wolf and colleagues can look back at their data to see whether the use of aspirin was an important variable distinguishing patients having strokes in decade two versus decade three of this study?