More misrepresentations in reports on Stroke Awareness Month. A great stroke association president would make sure reporting on stroke was accurate.
My reply:
There really are no effective treatments in stroke. Even if you get tPA in time it only works to fully reverse the stroke 12% of the time. For stroke rehab, it is even worse, only 10% of patients fully recover. No hospital I have ever seen lists statistics on; tPA full recovery, 30-day deaths, stroke rehab protocols with efficacy ratings, full recovery rate. The awareness campaign should be that everything in stroke is a failure. The doctors are doing nothing in the first week when the neuronal cascade of death is occurring. I'm a stroke survivor and I worry that my children in 30 years will not have better stroke intervention results.
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/time-is-everything-when-it-comes-to-strokes/article_1bd6c811-d929-5728-a02f-aba7357912df.html
The difference between living with a severe disability and returning to independent activities after a stroke depends on time.
Health-care
experts work to teach people how to recognize and react to someone
showing signs of a stroke so effective treatment can take place in the
window of time when the best possible outcome can be achieved.
Dr.
Jorge Eller, Thomas Jefferson University cerebrovascular and
endovascular neurosurgeon at AtlantiCare, emphasized during May’s Stroke
Awareness Month how public education on strokes could save someone from
long-term disability.
“We try to convey, every time, that strokes are
potentially treatable,” he said. “With all the technology and
understanding on strokes today, we can potentially completely reverse
symptoms of stroke. However, time is everything. If they come to us too
late, we may not be able to do that.”
Stroke, a lack of blood
supply in the brain, is the fifth leading cause of death in the United
States. It’s also a leading cause of long-term disability, according to
the American Stroke Association.
The federal Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention data show South Jersey counties lead the state in
stroke hospitalizations, deaths and preventable deaths. Cumberland
County had the highest rate, about 84 people per 100,000 dying from a
stroke from 2013 through 2015.
Earlier this month, AtlantiCare
Regional Medical Center’s City Campus became a Comprehensive Stroke
Center — the highest designation given by the national joint commission
to only a few hospitals in the state with extensive stroke care
(not results)capabilities.
Eller tries to get patients, families and other
health-care professionals to remember an acronym for signs of stroke: BE
FAST. The acronym reminds people to look for loss of Balance, blurred
or vision problems in the Eyes, droopiness in the Face, weakness or
numbness in the Arms and slurred or garbled Speech.
The last
letter, T, is for Time: People need to call 911 as quickly as possible
when a symptom is present. Taking an ambulance to the hospital is key,
he said, because paramedics can start immediate treatment and relay
information to the hospital quickly.
“The symptoms could be from
something else, but the bottom line is, until you know, you should
think, ‘This could be a stroke,’ and get to the hospital to be
evaluated,” he said. “Timing can be the difference between a small
deficit one can live with versus a large deficit.”
Eller sees
patients who come in immediately, and often can remove clots and restore
blood flow to vessels in the brain for a good outcome, he said.
But some patients who wait too long.
When
these people get to the hospital, Eller said, he may not be able to
save brain vessels affected by a stroke, which can result in
disabilities such as paralysis, chronic pain, speech disruption, memory
weakness and emotional issues.
AtlantiCare experts often send
local residents to the Bacharach Institute for Rehabilitation in
Galloway Township for stroke rehabilitation.
Jessica Lewis, occupational therapist and
co-coordinator of Bacharach’s stroke program, said she sees a range of
people who come to the center to recover or improve physical and
psychological functions and activities after a stroke.
“Within the
first few weeks, we try to give them an intense rehab,” she said. “The
goal is to try and recover from deficits they’ve experienced. It’s very
time-sensitive.”
Some patients her stroke team treats — some as
young as 18 — work on getting back to the physical and mental levels
they were at before their stroke, she said.
Others work on
walking, coordination, getting dressed, moving the upper extremities,
swallowing, vision and other impairments to get the best improvement
possible if a stroke caused a long-term disability, she said. Therapists
have been using graded motor imagery therapy to “trick” the brain,
using a mirror, into improving function in limbs affected by paralysis
from a stroke.
Lewis said she and other rehabilitation experts
emphasize the education component of identifying strokes, especially for
patients at risk of future strokes.
“Once I worked with adult
stroke patients, I fell in love with the progress they can make, and
they work so hard because they want to get better,” she said.
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