Stroke Patients Lose Month for Each 15-Minute Delay
March 18, 2014 Leave a comment
Stroke Patients Lose Month for Each 15-Minute Delay
Stroke patients are robbed of a month of disability-free life for every 15-minute delay in treatment to restore blood flow to the brain, a study found.
The clot-busting therapy tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, should be given within 4 and a half hours of the onset of stroke symptoms, according to the American Stroke Association. Speeding treatment by just 1 minute means another 1.8 days of healthy life, according to research published today in the journal Stroke by doctors in Australia, Finland and the U.S.
“The main delay in stroke is due to people not calling for help,” said lead author Atte Meretoja, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne and a neurologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. “We have now demonstrated that this is very harmful, and people lose on average a month of life for every 15 minutes they wait at home hoping that the symptoms will go away.”
By quantifying the importance of speed, the researchers aim to inspire medical services to improve response time. The world’s fastest stroke services in Helsinki and Melbourne take an average 20 minutes from the patient’s arrival at the hospital to start treatment, Meretoja said. Most other centers in Australia, the U.S. and Europe take 70-80 minutes.
Brain Death
Stroke is the fourth-most common cause of death in the U.S, and the leading cause of adult disability. It occurs when blood flow to the brain stops, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Brain cells begin to die within minutes. Ischemic stroke, which accounts for about 87 percent of cases, is caused by a blood clot, while hemorrhagic stroke is caused by a blood vessel that breaks and bleeds into the brain.
Symptoms of stroke include sudden numbness of the leg, arm or face, confusion, problems with vision, abrupt severe headache, dizziness, loss of balance or trouble walking. The American Stroke Association advises that people call emergency medical services immediately if someone shows any of these symptoms.
The research by scientists at the University of Melbourne, Helsinki University Central Hospital and the University of California, Los Angeles Stroke Center, is based on evidence from trials of clot-busting drugs that was applied to 2,258 stroke patients in Australia and Finland to calculate what the patient outcomes would have been if they had been treated faster or slower.
Although all patients benefited from faster treatment, younger patients with longer life expectancies gained more than older patients, the authors found.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Melbourne at j.gale@bloomberg.net
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