In a rare display of expertise and alacrity, a team of specialists at the Columbia Asia Hospital here successfully helped a stroke patient recover within few hours. However, they applauded the family of the patient who managed to bring him to the emergency services department within 3 hours of stroke.
The patient, a 48-year-old man from the city, was brought in around 9:30 AM after an acute stroke. The event affected his/her ability to talk and he had a dense hemiplegia ( paralysis or weakness on the upper and lower limbs) at the right side of the body as an impact of the stroke.
“As soon as the patient was brought in, we performed an MRI that showed a small infarction (tissue death due to inadequate blood supply) in the middle cerebral artery (MCA). The MCA is the largest cerebral artery; it is the only vessel that is most commonly affected by a cerebrovascular accident. It also showed formation of a blood clot, known as a thrombus, in M1 which affected the blood supply. If not treated in first 6 hours, this patient could have remained permanently paralysed for life and this would have lead to loss of his job as rikshaw driver which is his lifeline to earn daily bread. The relatives were given option of endovascular thrombectomy; which is treatment of choice in patients who have large vessel occlusion. Since patient came to us in window period for thrombectomy (within 6 hrs), we removed the blood clot through thrombectomy and the patient started showing improvement right away,” says Dr.Yadav Munde, Interventional Radiologist, Columbia Asia Hospital.
Stroke patients often suffer more because they are unable to identify the signs of the event, which further prevents them to report at a hospital within the ‘golden hour’. Experts say that in case of a stroke, ‘time lost is brain lost’ – a stroke causes the brain lose as many neurons as it does in almost 3.6 years of normal aging for each hour of delay in treatment. According to the American Heart Association (AHA),one must be careful of FAST – the signs of stroke: (F)acialdropping, (A)rm weakness, (S)peechdifficulty, and (T)imelyhospital admission.
“Since the person was brought in time, we could give him a more effective treatment. People who have risk factors of a cardiovascular disease (CVD) should be aware of the signs of stroke as it may occur anytime. We are very happy that the patient is recuperating well within such a short span of time and did not experience any intracranial (within the skull) bleeding,” says Dr Bhushan Joshi, Neurologist, Columbia Asia Hospital.
“Such patients need treatment by multidisciplinary team of doctors such as Neurologist, Interventional Radiologist, neurosurgeon with good critical care backup; and all this is in place in our hospital” says Dr Viju Rajan, CEO, Columbia Asia Hospital.
“Researchers document troubling rise in strokes in young adults, starting at the age of 25yrs. In fact, young stroke is the third most common cause of death worldwide and the fourth leading cause of disease burden. It is assumed that the average age of patients with stroke in developing countries, such as India is usually 15 years younger than those in developed countries like the US,” says Dr.Yadav Munde, vascular surgeon in Pune, Columbia Asia Hospital.