Strokes cause more disability than just about any other disease, but they don’t have to. Effective treatments are known for the most common type of stroke; delivering them to the right patients has proven to be difficult. Now a group of researchers is proposing some changes in how stroke care is organized, with the hope of matching reality to the promise and greatly improving stroke outcomes.
In 1995, a landmark study was published showing that the impact of stroke on the human brain could be greatly diminished by using clot-busting drugs to dissolve the clots that kill brain cells in ischemic stroke. (Ischemic stroke is responsible for about four of five strokes. In ischemic stroke, brain tissue dies because blood clots or narrowed blood vessels block flow of oxygen-rich blood to brain tissue. In hemorrhagic stroke, which affects about one in five stroke patients, brain tissue dies because a burst blood vessel causes bleeding in the tissue.)
Today, though, it is estimated that fewer than one in ten victims of ischemic stroke are treated with either intravenous tPA, the main clot-dissolving drug, or other effective treatments, such as breaking up the clot with a mechanical device inserted inside the blood vessel.
The accepted convention is that tPA does not work unless the i.v. is started within three hours of the onset of stroke symptoms. Most patients don’t get to the hospital that quickly, and even when they do, time is eaten up by the necessity to give everyone a CT scan to make sure they are not having a bleeding stroke, for which use of the clot-dissolving drugs could be a disaster.
A new article by Drs. Reza Hakimelahi and R. Gilberto González, “Neuroimaging of Ischemic Stroke With CT and MRI: Advancing Towards Physiology-Based Diagnosis and Therapy,” advocates these changes to help deliver more of these proven treatments to more patients:
* Doctors need to recognize that the three-hour window for treatment sometimes is much longer in patients who have blockages of smaller vessels in the brain with some temporary compensation through “collateral” vessels. Better imaging studies can identify these patients who have an “ischemic penumbra” that would benefit from clot-dissolving drugs.
* Many patients can benefit, even after the three hours has expired, by direct intervention with mechanical devices to break up clots from the inside of the vessels. Because this requires expertise in interventional neuroradiology, a field with only a few hundred practitioners in the United States, the authors recommend cross-training for doctors in related fields who know how to use tiny tubes inside blood vessels to deliver treatments. These include interventional cardiologists.
* Hospitals that are recognized as expert in care of acute strokes could be divided between advanced and general levels of expertise. On the general level, any such hospital needs to have 24-hour CT scanning and the ability to give clot-busting drugs in the emergency department. To qualify as an advanced stroke center, the hospital would have to have the ability to do interventional treatments inside blood vessels (“endovascular therapy”), a neuro-intensive care unit, and a team of doctors from multiple specialties that work together to decide the best treatment for each patient.
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As these ideas are debated in the medical industry, the best strategy for patients is to have some advance knowledge and basic planning. Knowing how common strokes are, and how urgent the timeline is (“Time Is Brain” in stroke treatment) once stroke symptoms start, here is what I advocate:
* Know the basic symptoms of stroke, and don’t rationalize your way out of a trip to the hospital if the symptoms seem mild or go away after a few minutes. Here is a basic list from the American Stroke Association:
* Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body * Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding * Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes * Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination * Sudden, severe headache with no known cause
* Know which hospital in your area has advanced stroke treatment staff and machines. Ask if they have a multi-disciplinary team. (It should include both neurosurgeons and endovascular therapists.) Ask if they have a neuro-intensive care unit (an ICU that treats only patients with brain or spinal cord problems).
* If a loved one suffers stroke symptoms, do not let the rescue squad take them to the nearest emergency room UNLESS the same hospital has advanced stroke treatment abilities.
* A multi-disciplinary team is important because conflicts of interest can drive doctors to advocate for therapy they can do when a safer, more effective treatment might be available from a doctor with different training. Having doctors work together to help the patient and family decide treatment is the best approach.
In his new book, The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care — and Avoiding the Worst, Patrick Malone discusses one tragic case in which a patient needed a teamwork approach to her neurological problem but didn’t get it because the hospital had no effective team in place. The book discusses the questions to ask to make sure your doctors are working together and not as competitors for your health care business.