Broad-based group of physicians calls for improvement in stroke... (reatment also known as endovascular stro...)

Broad-based group of physicians calls for improvement in stroke treatment

Date:8/20/2007

reatment, also known as endovascular stroke therapy, has been shown to be effective over a longer time period6 to 8 hours after the onset of stroke symptoms. Using this approach, a slender tube, or catheter, is threaded from an artery in the groin into the aorta, then up through the carotid arteries in the neck and into the specific artery in the brain that is blocked by a blood clot. In some cases, clot-busting medications are injected directly into the clot in hopes that it will dissolve. More often, a retrieval device with a corkscrew-like tip is passed through the catheter into the clot. When the device is pulled back into the catheter, it brings the clot with it. A stent is also sometimes implanted to prop open the artery.

Never before have we had the capability to manage this disease with such advanced techniques, said L. Nelson Hopkins, M.D., professor and chairman of neurosurgery and a professor of radiology at the State University of New York, Buffalo. We need to get that capability broadly disseminated so we can do a better job for stroke patients. Stroke is a disaster for patients, families, and society.

The ranks of those performing catheter-based treatment of stroke are alarmingly thin. There are only 385 interventional neuroradiologists practicing in the United States, according to survey data. In 5 states, not a single physician is available to perform endovascular stroke therapy.

The new document calls for solving this critical shortage by tapping into a group already trained in using catheters to treat carotid artery disease and strokes that occur as a complication of carotid stent placement, a procedure known as neuro-rescue. By adapting and expanding neuro-rescue skills, interventional cardiologists, interventional radiologists, and vascular surgeons could markedly increase the number of physicians available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to treat stroke.

This broad-based physician group would bring not only ex
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Contact: Kathy Boyd David
kbdavid@scai.org
717-422-1181
Weber Shandwick Worldwide
Source:Eurekalert

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