Personalising secondary prevention: different treatments for different strokes.

Stroke is a syndrome caused by many different disease mechanisms rather than being a single disease. It is important to identify the underlying mechanism accurately in individual patients in order to choose the best treatment approach. This article provides practical tips to diagnose the underlying subtype of stroke, and in particular discusses non-lacunar pathologies that can present with a clinical lacunar syndrome. It also reviews the recent advances in recurrent stroke prevention, including using more intensive antiplatelet regimens in the acute phase, and the concept that undetected cardiac arrhythmias may be important in apparently cryptogenic stroke.