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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Every second counts for stroke patients, as studies show they can lose up to 27 million brain cells per minute. Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) recently published new findings in Stroke that show patients transported to the hospital by mobile stroke unit instead of standard ambulance received a clot-busting procedure an average of 10 minutes faster, which could potentially save up to 270 million neurons per patient.

In 2014, McGovern Medical School at UTHealth was the first in the nation to launch a mobile stroke unit, a specially equipped ambulance for diagnosing and treating stroke rapidly before hospital arrival.

"The quicker we get stroke victims treatment that will restore blood flow, the more brain tissue we can save," said Alexandra Czap, MD, vascular neurology fellow in the Department of Neurology at McGovern Medical School and first author of the paper. "This study shows that mobile stroke units like ours can be effective in streamlining time to treatment, potentially saving neurological function, and ultimately improving quality of life in stroke patients."

The study looked at data from 161 patients from Houston and two other locations from 2014 to 2018 who underwent intra-arterial thrombectomy after suffering an acute ischemic stroke, the most common kind, which is caused by a blockage in a cerebral artery. The only medical therapy known to treat ischemic stroke, tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), is not always able to clear a large clot. To perform the procedure, also known as endovascular thrombectomy, a vascular neurologist threads a catheter usually through a groin artery up to the blockage, where a small device inserted into the catheter is used to remove the clot.

"This is a hallmark paper because it shows that pre-hospital evaluation and management on a mobile stroke unit can significantly reduce time to endovascular treatment for patients with large artery clots," said Amanda L. Jagolino-Cole, MD, a teleneurologist and assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at McGovern Medical School, who was the senior author of the paper.

Alexandra L. Czap, Et. Al. Emergency Department Door-to-Puncture Time Since 2014. Stroke, 2019; 50 (7): 1774 DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.119.025106

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