Koch Seen Recovering Fully From Small Stroke

Mayor Edward I. Koch has suffered a small stroke but is expected to recover fully, his physicians said Friday after conducting a series of specialized tests.

Koch, 62, who had been hospitalized Thursday after complaining of dizziness and nausea, was transferred by ambulance to the Neurological Institute of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center early Friday after his symptoms recurred.

Prognosis Is Excellent

Dr. J. P. Mohr, director of the hospital’s stroke center, called the mayor’s incident “a tiny trivial stroke, the neurological equivalent to breaking his toe.”

Doctors said they expect Koch, who is serving his third term in office, to return home in a few days and resume work within a week.

Mohr said the prognosis is excellent that the mayor can return to the same pace he kept before the incident.

Physicians who examined Koch said his major arteries were healthy, no mental impairment was found and studies showed the mayor had the brain anatomy of a much younger man. They said, however, the stroke, which damaged a portion of the lenticulostriate artery, one of the brain’s tiny arteries, had left the mayor temporarily with slight weakness in the left part of his face and his left arm. “His voice is barely affected,” Mohr said.

He added he hopes all of the problems will clear by the time the mayor returns home.

‘Ostentatiously Healthy’

Mohr said the area of the stroke was so small--about one-eighth of an inch of the artery--that it required special studies to find it. The artery involved is the size of a human hair, he said. When the mayor is released from the hospital, he will have to watch his diet and blood pressure and take an aspirin each day. Studies have found aspirin helpful in preventing blood clots.

“He (Koch) has the brain image of a man in his 20s. He is ostentatiously healthy,” Mohr told newsmen at a briefing after the mayor was examined.

Koch was stricken Thursday as he was en route to Harlem in his limousine. He asked to be taken to the nearest hospital. The mayor’s driver turned on the siren, ran some red lights and within a minute Koch arrived at Lenox Hill Hospital on Park Avenue.

Lenox Hill Hospital physicians diagnosed that Koch had suffered a spasm of a cerebral artery that temporarily diminished the supply of blood to the brain. But when the problem recurred, it was decided to seek more specialized medical advice.

Doctors at Columbia-Presbyterian, who made the diagnosis of a stroke, said that of 1,800 patients with similar diagnoses at the hospital, only two have suffered subsequent major strokes.