Recent advances in information technology (IT) have drastically changed our life style. IT is also changing the features of stroke management. The review article by Dr. Heo and his colleagues addresses this important and interesting issue. IT and recent trends in stroke management have a number of things in common. For example, IT is characterized by its enormous speed, while early and speedy treatment is an essential component of stroke management. In addition, IT can spread information to a large number of people without much cost, while stroke education through the spread of information to the general population is important in stroke prevention. This paper nicely describes the utility of IT in various areas of stroke management, including education, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation. In the near future, IT may become an essential tool not only for our daily life but also in the management of stroke.
I also read with interest the article on the epidemiology of stroke in India written by Dr. Pandian and his colleagues. India is a huge country that contains a variety of ethnic groups that use heterogeneous languages. The urban-rural differences are also significant. Therefore, it is difficult to understand the stroke problem as a whole in this country. Nevertheless, this article nicely summarizes diverse aspects of stroke issues, including the epidemiology, stroke subtypes, rehabilitation, and governmental efforts to tackle this problem. Despite the enormous burden of stroke in Asia, information on this region has been scarcely reported in the literature. One of the missions of the Journal of Stroke (JOS) is to present Asian data more actively, thus ultimately decreasing the stroke burden in this region; this article certainly contributes to this endeavor.
Finally, I am pleased to inform you that the JOS is now linked to PubMed Central (PMC), which will result in our papers being readily available worldwide. I hope more people can enjoy reading JOS and gladly submit their work to us.