A medical device half the size of a toothpick likely is the most important innovation now in the stroke “research pipeline,” and Erlanger hospital’s stroke center has more experience with it than any other facility in the world, the center’s director told hospital trustees on Thursday.
As one of just six U.S. sites taking part in clinical study on the device, Erlanger’s Southeast Regional Stroke Center has implanted the tiny electrode in 22 stroke patients in less than a year — more than any other participating facility including sites in Germany, Spain and Japan, Dr. Thomas Devlin told trustees at Thursday night’s board meeting.
“That’s because we live in Chattanooga and you know what people smoke and eat around here, so we have a lot of opportunity to treat them,” Dr. Devlin said.
Strokes occur when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted, usually by a blood clot. The new device, implanted in the back of a patient’s throat underneath a bundle of nerves, can be activated by an electrical signal, sending a current through those nerves and instantly increasing blood flow to the brain, Dr. Devlin said. The treatment significantly can reduce damage from a stroke, he said.
The electrode device, called the Ischemic Stroke System and designed by Israeli medical device company BrainsGate, has been shown to effectively treat stroke victims a full 24 hours after a stroke, Dr. Devlin said.
The other standard treatment — a clot-busting drug — is effective only up to three hours after a stroke, a window of time that has elapsed by the time most stroke patients get to a hospital, Dr. Devlin said.
Last March at Erlanger, Dr. Peter Hunt, an ear, nose and throat doctor, performed the nation’s first implantation of the device.
“It didn’t happen at Duke, it didn’t happen at Harvard — it happened here right in Chattanooga,” Dr. Devlin said.
Also at the meeting, Bill Hicks, executive director of the Southside and Dodson Avenue Community Health Centers, told the board members that the centers did not receive a hoped-for federal grant to relocate the Southside Community Health Center from its current location at the former Franklin Middle School on 37th Street.
The Chattanooga City Council had committed to donate 8.2 acres of land on Ohls Avenue to be the new site for the health center if the grant was awarded. Erlanger and health centers’ boards should work to keep hold of that property, Mr. Hicks said.
ERLANGER AND VOLKSWAGEN
Also at the board meeting, Erlanger CEO Jim Brexler announced that Volkswagen has accepted Erlanger’s bid for a three-year contract to provide medical services to more than 2,000 employees of the Volkswagen plant. The new clinic site is scheduled to open by July 2010.