Stroke patients transferred to a hospital by a helicopter ambulance can receive a thrombectomy much faster than those transferred on the ground, according to a study released July 22 at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery.
The sooner a stroke patient can access a thrombectomy, or minimally invasive surgery to remove a stroke-causing blood clot, the more likely they are to have a positive outcome. For that reason, the study's results suggest that transferring patients by helicopter will lead to better outcomes, according to Hormuzdiyar Dasenbrock, MD, a neurosurgeon and study author.
To conduct the study, researchers analyzed 33 patients who were transferred to Chicago's Rush University Medical Center for a thrombectomy between January 2015 and March 2018. Patients transported by helicopter had a much shorter time to surgery start compared to those transported on the ground. The helicopters got patients to surgery 42 minutes faster, on average, when transported over 30 miles. All transports below 10 miles were done by ground ambulance.