The number of stroke patients at eight rural hospitals — seven in West Virginia and one in Maryland — treated with medication to break up blood clots through WVU Medicine’s tele-stroke program continues to grow.
The drug, tPA, is the only noninvasive treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for ischemic strokes, which account for 87% of all strokes. But for tPA to properly break up blood clots, the drug has to be administered within four-and-a-half hours of the stroke, which is where the WVU tele-stroke program comes in.
WVU Medicine started the program in 2016. The program allows doctors at Fairmont General Hospital; Camden Clark Medical Center, Parkersburg; Berkley Medical Center, Martinsburg; Davis Memorial Hospital, Elkins; Potomac Valley Hospital, Keyser; Raleigh General Hospital, Beckley; and Reynolds Memorial Hospital in Glen Dale and Garrett Regional Medical Center in Oakland, Md., to connect with WVU Medicine neurologists about stroke patients. This, in turn, saves time and gives doctors in the smaller hospitals time to administer tPA within its four-and-a-half hour window.
WVU Medicine said Thursday 19% of the tele-stroke consultations were treated in 2016 with tPA. By 2018, 27% were. Also, use of tPA made transfers to acute-care hospitals unnecessary 65% of the time.
“Acute ischemic stroke is one of those time-sensitive examples where access to specialists can make the difference in actually getting people treated,” Amelia Adcock, associate director of the WVU Stroke Center, said in a statement.
Signs of a stroke include sudden confusion understanding speech or speaking; a sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body; severe headache with no known cause; balance problems or difficulty walking, and vision problems in one or both eyes.
“We’re not here to dictate what doctors do,” she said. “We’re here to lend a hand if they want it — especially in those borderline cases — to say, ‘Yes. This does look like a stroke. This person is eligible for treatment with this drug. Have you considered it? Where are your thoughts and concerns if you don’t want to use it?’ There’s someone there to bounce ideas off of.”
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