Dystextia: Sloppy Texting Could Be A Sign Of Stroke

DETROIT (WWJ) - It's being called "Dystextia" and it could be a warning sign of a stroke.

Dr. Omran Kaskar, Senior Neurology Resident at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit stumbled on the discovery, somewhat by chance.  After a man in his 40's came in feeling ill.

"The night before he was texting his wife and the texts that he sent were non-fluent, nonsensical, kind of disjointed," Dr. Kaskar told WWJ's Kathryn Larson.

His wife told Dr. Kaskar her husband was sending her text gibberish.  So Dr.  Kaskar decided to try something new and gave the patient a blackberry - and told him to start texting:

"The key here is ...we asked him to see, when he looked at it, his own message, 'were there any typing errors?' he didn't recognize that there were any," said Kaskar.

"This dystextia abnormality was his  only conspicuous abnormality he presented with and he didn't have any major weakness or numbness," he said.

But Dr. Kaskar says there were plenty of mistakes and then ordered an MRI -- that revealed an acute stroke.

"What's intriguing and what we took out of this is that the  full manifestation of his stroke was his inability to type  or text, hence the term; dystextia," he said. "Which we kind of just coined and has kind of been a buzz word."

Kaskar noted that up until now no one believed that a problem texting could be a sign of a stroke. But the MRI confirming the issue and the medical community took note of the text message symptom.