Brain & Nervous System Stroke Symptoms Print What It Means If You Have a Silent Stroke By Heidi Moawad, MD facebook linkedin Heidi Moawad is a neurologist and expert in the field of brain health and neurological disorders. Dr. Moawad regularly writes and edits health and career content for medical books and publications. Learn about our editorial process Heidi Moawad, MD Medically reviewed by Medically reviewed by Claudia Chaves, MD on January 26, 2020 Claudia Chaves, MD, is board-certified in cerebrovascular disease and neurology with a subspecialty certification in vascular neurology. She is an associate professor of neurology at Tufts Medical School and medical director of the Lahey Clinic Multiple Sclerosis Center in Lexington, Massachusetts. Learn about our Medical Review Board Claudia Chaves, MD on January 26, 2020 Stroke Overview Symptoms Causes Diagnosis Treatment Coping Jose Luis Pelaez / Blend Images / Getty Images A stroke is such a significant event that it is hard to believe that some strokes actually go completely unnoticed. In fact, many patients can be completely caught off guard and are shocked to learn that they have been living with an "old stroke" that did not cause any handicap at all, which is referred to as a silent stroke. Usually, a silent stroke is noticed unexpectedly on a brain CT or brain MRI. These imaging tests can easily distinguish past strokes from recent strokes. Recent strokes will have certain features that you will not see if the stroke occurred in the past, such as swelling, inflammation, blood clots, and bleeding. Also, older strokes have certain characteristic appearances caused by calcification (calcium deposits) and atrophy (tissue death). How Stroke Is Diagnosed What to Do Being told that you have had a previous silent stroke certainty sounds alarming, but, in truth, it is not a cause for alarm. If you have had a silent stroke, this simply means that you need a new strategy to improve your cardiovascular health and reduce the risk of future strokes. However, if you have had a silent stroke and have been able to manage without any overt neurological symptoms, you shouldn't necessarily assume that there is less to worry about. Here are some things that you should know: Good News The good news is that silent strokes are generally less impactful because they occur where other parts of the brain can compensate for any damage. In short, if a certain part of the brain is damaged, other adjacent neural pathways can take over those functions. More often than not, if you have been able to manage well after a small stroke, you are more likely to have a healthy, fit body and brain. Generally speaking, people who are younger and physically fit often can often bounce back from a stroke with few to no symptoms or disability. Bad News Having had a silent stroke generally indicates that you have one or more of the risk factors of stroke. These include congenital risk factors (those that you are born with) and lifestyle risk factors (those that you can change or control). Common risk factors of stroke include cerebrovascular disease, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, a blood clotting disorder, and smoking. Managing these risk factors through medication, diet, exercise, and stress control is important for your health. Additionally, having had one or more silent strokes in the past tends to increase your risk of neurological symptoms if you have another stroke in the future. Recurring small strokes can cause serious complications, such as vascular Parkinson's or vascular dementia, due to the cumulative damage to multiple areas of the brain. The compensation afforded by other parts of the brain will eventually run out if additional parts of the brain are damaged. Stroke as a Cause of Parkinson's Disease Silent Stroke vs. Mini-Stroke A silent stroke is not the same as a mini-stroke. A mini-stroke describes a transient ischemic attack (TIA). A TIA is a stroke that causes noticeable symptoms that reverse and completely improve without any long-term brain damage. It is a warning, but it does not appear on a brain MRI or brain CT scan. Unlike a silent stroke, a TIA doesn't cause notable harm to the brain. But a TIA is often predictive of future strokes and warrants the same preventive treatments used if a silent stroke is diagnosed. Preventing Stroke If You Have a TIA A Word From Verywell If your doctor has told you that you have had previous silent strokes, they will recommend screening tests to evaluate your risk factors. The next step is to control the risk factors, through actions such as taking heart or blood pressure medication, eating right, lowering cholesterol or managing salt in your diet, exercising, and cutting back on cigarettes or stress. If you found out that you have had silent strokes in the emergency room, or from someone other than your regular doctor, you need to let your doctor know. Most importantly, if you do not currently have a doctor, it is time to get connected to a regular physician and to start taking care of your health. 10 Tests Used to Measure Stroke Risk Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign up for our Health Tip of the Day newsletter, and receive daily tips that will help you live your healthiest life. Sign Up You're in! Thank you, {{form.email}}, for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. What are your concerns? Other Inaccurate Hard to Understand Submit Article Sources Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Squarzoni P, Tamashiro-Duran JH, Duran FLS, et al. High frequency of silent brain infarcts associated with cognitive deficits in an economically disadvantaged population. Clinics (Sao Paulo). 2017;72(8):474-480. doi:10.6061/clinics/2017(08)04 Gupta A, Giambrone AE, Gialdini G, et al. Silent brain infarction and risk of future stroke: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Stroke. 2016;47(3):719-25. doi:10.1161/STROKEAHA.115.011889 Delgado P, Riba-Llena I, Tovar JL, et al. Prevalence and associated factors of silent brain infarcts in a Mediterranean cohort of hypertensives. Hypertension. 2014;64(3):658-63. doi:10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.114.03563 Blomstrand A, Blomstrand C, Ariai N, Bengtsson C, Björkelund C. Stroke incidence and association with risk factors in women: A 32-year follow-up of the Prospective Population Study of Women in Gothenburg. BMJ Open. 2014;4(10):e005173. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014-005173 Blanco-Rojas L, Arboix A, Canovas D, Grau-Olivares M, Oliva Morera JC, Parra O. Cognitive profile in patients with a first-ever lacunar infarct with and without silent lacunes: a comparative study. BMC Neurol. 2013;13:203. doi:10.1186/1471-2377-13-203 Fanning JP, Wong AA, Fraser JF. The epidemiology of silent brain infarction: a systematic review of population-based cohorts. BMC Med. 2014;12:119. doi:10.1186/s12916-014-0119-0 Simmons BB, Cirignano B, Gadegbeku AB. Transient ischemic attack: Part I. Diagnosis and evaluation. Am Fam Physician. 2012 Sep 15;86(6):521-526.