A new report published this week in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association examined the rapidity of dissolving obstructing arterial lesions its relationship to long-term stroke outcomes among several thousand patients. The results are quite enlightening, and present a clear opportunity to improve the lives of stroke victims by simply decreasing the time from first symptoms, to treatment.
A group of researchers from Melbourne Australia, Helsinki Finland, and UCLA studied 2,258 consecutive acute stroke patients treated with intravenous thrombolysis (IV clot-dissolving treatment, most often tissue thromboplastin activator, tPA) between 1998 and 2011. Time from first manifestation of stroke until first administration of tPA was derived from the medical records, and degree of ongoing disability was quantified using a baseline and subsequent well-documented scale (Rankin Scale).
The results are both exciting, and scary: they estimated that each minute decrement in the time to administer the clot-busting drug resulted in an almost 2-day gain in healthful life and activities, in terms of less disability. (Of course, given the observational nature of this analysis, i.e. it was not controlled nor randomized, no cause-and-effect link can be established, only suggested).
ACSH s Dr. Gil Ross had this comment: There are two key points in this story that should not be lost in the summary: first, the public must be made aware of the earliest symptoms of a stroke, and be alerted to immediately call (or have a loved one call) for help, thus shortening the time until treatment is initiated; and 4 out of 5 strokes, one of the leading killers in America, can be prevented by not smoking, getting high blood pressure detected and treated, and getting blood cholesterol levels under control.