Therapy of Ischemic Cerebral Vascular Disease

To the Editor: A patient who has had a transient ischemic attack is by definition neurologically intact, at least when seen 24 hours after the event. The very concept that he has a disease — namely, threatened stroke — is based on statistical reasoning. In fact, several studies have shown that the majority of patients do not go on to have a completed stroke over the next year. In order to prove that any proposed therapy is better than “doing nothing,” it would seem to be incumbent on the proponents to prove that the probability of stroke or of a.