 Stroke occurs when there is sudden disruption of the blood flow to the brain. The blood vessel carrying the blood to the brain either is occluded or it gets ruptured causing stroke. So essentially there are two types of stroke ischemic stroke which occurs because of the occluded blood vessel or a hemorrhagic stroke where the blood vessel ruptures and cause bleeding inside the brain. So how does a common person, a lay person know that stroke has happened or the symptoms of stroke? Stroke symptoms are always sudden or abrupt in onset. So any person who develops sudden onset weakness of a hand, weakness of a leg, a sudden onset weakness of one hand, one leg, abrupt onset of speech and language disturbances not able to talk like before, is slurring now, not able to express himself, they are all the symptoms of stroke, sudden onset of visual blurring, sudden onset not able to see at one side of the visual field and when he is walking, he is swaying to one side, recurrent tendency to falls, this all can be a stroke symptoms. In short any symptom which occurs suddenly, any neurological symptoms is a stroke unless proved otherwise. So what should one do when there is a symptoms of stroke noticed? The major onus nowadays is to get the patient as early as possible to the hospital because the as early the patient comes to the hospital, better is the outcome. The occluded vessel has to be opened as early as possible, if not the brain cells are irreversibly damaged. That's why what we call a golden hour or a golden period where within few hours after the stroke, the brain is not completely damaged and if we can restore the blood flow to the brain, the patients outcomes, clinical outcomes are better and very good. So how do we treat? So when the patient is brought to the hospital, first we decide whether it is a stroke because of occluded vessel or because of the ruptured vessel. If it is an occluded vessel, we try to open the occluded vessel by giving an injection, the process what we call as IV thrombolysis or the other we pass a catheter through the vessel and suck out or pull out the clot what we call as thrombectomy. So immediately the vessel is opened and the blood goes to the brain and the blood flow is restored.