Remote Stroke Management

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Anchor lead: People experiencing a stroke can still get best management via telemedicine, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Stroke is a medical emergency, because early intervention with either clot-busting medicines or surgical removal of the clot, called thrombectomy, results in greater preservation of function. Now a new study shows that telestroke, where an expert is called in via telemedicine, enables centers without stroke experts to help their patients best. Victor Urrutia, a telestroke expert at Johns Hopkins, comments.

Urritia: This paper refers to the acute stroke evaluation. So the initial evaluation of a patient suspected of having a stroke, that occurs usually in the emergency department but can also in the hospital. The encounter is typically to determine if clinically this seems to be a stroke and whether they are a candidate for either thrombolytic therapy so the clot-busting medication, or mechanical thrombectomy, so in this setting would be a transfer for that.  :28

Urrutia notes that people can feel confident in the telestroke approach to achieve best outcomes. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.