Errant Text Messages Could Be Sign of Stroke, Study Finds

  • 12 years ago
Researchers say that errant text messages could be a sign of a stroke.

A recent study has found that gibberish-like text messages could potentially be a sign of a stroke.

Three Harvard Medical School doctors launched the study after an incident in late 2011 when a man received a garbled text message from his then pregnant wife. The husband knew his wife’s auto correct was deactivated and he feared something was wrong with her. He made sure that she went to the emergency room.

Turns out, she had been having a stroke. Although she and the baby survived, the occurrence prompted the research which suggests that error ridden, bizarre text messages could be used to diagnose a stroke.

The study findings were published in the Archives of Neurology. The doctors state that “the growing digital record will likely become an increasingly important means of identifying neurologic disease, particularly in patient populations that rely more heavily on written rather than spoken communication.”

The authors describe the texting issue as “dystextia”. The incident is thought to be the first instance where a text was used to diagnose a stroke.

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