Stroke at a Distance

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: Why are there differences among stroke treatments around the US? Elizabeth Tracey reports

If you’re experiencing symptoms of a stroke, evaluation and treatment can vary quite a bit around the country, with a new study on the benefits of telemedicine in stroke evaluation perhaps helping to even the field. Victor Urrutia, a telestroke expert at Johns Hopkins, explains.

Urrutia: The stroke system in the US is organized broadly in several tiers. So there’s stroke ready hospitals, where they have prepared themselves to evaluate and treat, start for example the TPA, the thrombolytic agent then transfer the patient out to another center to continue the management of that patient. There’s the primary stroke centers, where they are equipped to treat the patient with the antithrombolytic, and keep the patient and continue the rest of the management.    :29

Urrutia says that with telestroke evaluation, people can feel confident that they will get expert evaluation and management even in more isolated areas although that may involve transfer to another facility. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.