When you hear about a stroke, you probably think of an older patient. But doctors hope you'll change your mind. There's an underdiagnosed cause of stroke in young patints, called vertebral artery dissection.

Young mom Lisa Nagg was checking on her sleeping girls a few months back when her vision blurred, and she got dizzy, "I finally got myself up out of bed and I was walking to their door and I couldn't find their door. I was like standing at their dresser, and I thought, 'oh, something's really wrong.'"

Something was really wrong, she was having a stroke. "This is a young woman that did suffer a stroke due to tearing of one of the blood vessels at the, in the back and at the base of the brain," says Dr. Brad Bellotte.

The vertebral arteries route blood to the brain. Although fairly rare, vertebral dissections cause up to one-quarter of all strokes in young and middle aged patients. In Lisa's case, she'd been having neck pain. "Instead of moving my neck naturally, I was turning like this," Lisa says as she shows an example.

But surgery restored her eyesight and balance. "Our main goal is to give the brain room and allow it to swell and try to save the good brain that still remains. So, we'll open the leather covering of the brain, let the brain swell, and cut a patch graft that's made from this synthetic material, sew that in place to keep the brain all covered and protected and then we close the skin and muscles over that," says Dr. Bellotte.

Her story's important, because doctors are seeing more of these "young" strokes. "With the advent of MR angiography, of CAT scan angiography, and the fact that we are more mindful of the cause of stroke in the young adult, all of these things, factors combined um, we are picking up and diagnosing dissection far more commonly than in the past," says Dr. Ashis Tayal.

The symptoms of this kind of stroke include sudden vertigo, nausea, vomiting, headache, loss of coordination and slurred speech. You should be really aware of these symptoms if you've recently had a head or neck trauma. It can be diagnosed quickly with a CAT scan.. or M-R-I.