Neurologists at Winfield, Ill.-based Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital can now diagnose patients' strokes and set a course of treatment before they even arrive at the hospital thanks to the facility's telestroke program, reports AMA Wire.
Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital launched its mobile stroke unit in January 2017. The program relies on a modified ambulance that contains a CT machine, stroke-specific drugs and a telestroke connection, which allows neurologists to remotely diagnose an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke and decide whether the patient should receive the clot-busting drug tissue plasminogen activator.
"Five years ago, you wouldn't think this was possible," Harish Shownkeen, MD, medical director of the stroke and neurointerventional surgery programs at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, told AMA Wire. "We are bringing the hospital to patients' homes and treating them in the streets. We know that every 15 minutes earlier you treat the patient, the shorter their hospital stay and the less damage that is done."
The mobile stroke unit allowed patients to receive critical care 30 minutes faster than those transported to the hospital in a traditional ambulance, according to an analysis cited by AMA Wire.
Ischemic stroke patients treated via the mobile stroke unit received tPA 52 minutes after a 911 call was made, compared to 82 minutes for patients transported in a regular ambulance.