Good news for stroke patients in San Antonio. An aggressive effort to speed up treatment is working. It’s cutting down on death and disability from this common brain problem.
Stroke is an emergency and a leading cause of death. At San Antonio’s five Baptist hospitals, a concerted effort to treat patients more quickly has paid off for patients like 57-year-old Mellie Cardona-Flores, who woke up three weeks ago with a massive headache and a limp arm.
“It was totally out there because it doesn’t run in our family,” Cardona-Flores said. “We’re not sick people.”
Cardona-Flores was rushed to Southeast Baptist Hospital where she was given an immediate CT scan. That image can help determine whether a patient is having a bleeding brain attack or, more commonly, one that’s caused by a clot.
“The more quickly we give the medication, the better it is,” explained Dr. Dicky Huey, a neurologist who is the medical director of the Brain and Stroke Network. “And so time is brain.”
For many patients, a clot-busting drug called tPA (tissue plasminogen activator) is a live-saver. The faster it’s delivered, the better chance of functional recovery.
The national average for “door to needle” time, as it’s called, it just over 27%. As of March, the five Baptist hospitals have a stellar record, getting tPA to the patients who need it within an hour 75% of the time.
“That’s a marked improvement,” Huey commented. “We hope to continue to meet those goals and improve them and get them even better.”
Cardona-Flores is 85% to 90% recovered now, and grateful she got the quick intervention she needed.
“I can still type,” she said. “I can still speak. I can walk. I can move. My memory’s not gone.”
In just the past six months, the five Baptist hospitals in San Antonio have treated 950 stroke patients.
