Dr. Gary Steinberg

and cause a pulmonary embolus that generally on the venous side does not go to the brain.

You can develop some venous problems in the brain, which can cause a venous type stroke.

That's much less common.

And the way that causes a stroke is not lack of blood flow being delivered to the brain, but

By having a clot in an important vein, the blood can't get out of the brain.

It backs up and causes swelling or edema.

But that's much less common.

Generally, we talk about strokes as being arterial in nature and either blockage of a blood vessel or bursting of a vessel.

So different kinds of drugs thin the blood and they can predispose you to having a larger hemorrhage than you would if something bursts or if you fall and have some traumatic injury to your brain or anywhere in the body.

In general, they don't cause a hemorrhage because they're fairly safe.

But if there's, as I say, some interruption to the body, like a bruise, it would be a much worse type of bleed.

So, aspirin is a type of antiplatelet agent that thins the blood.

There are many types of antiplatelet agents, and they're very, very useful for treating people who have a predisposition to develop clots because they thin the blood.

Anticoagulants are another type.

They're known as Coumadin, Warfarin, Eliquis.

There's lots of new agents, and they're often taken orally or can be given intravenously.

Heparin's another one.

Again, they thin the blood, so they would put someone at somewhat increased risk for hemorrhage.

Then as far as oral contraceptives, if you go back to the 1970s when the oral contraceptives first generation were coming out, and they were heavily estrogen dominated rather than progesterone, they did and they still to some extent increased the risk of developing clogs.

So women back in the 70s who took oral contraceptives and smoked,