There isn’t a minute to waste when it comes to treating strokes, and while good treatments exist, they often come too late, leaving with lifelong disabilities or sometimes dead.
Stroke is a leading cause of serious long-term disability and the fifth leading cause of death in the United States, killing about 142,000 people a year, according to the American Heart Association. But research suggests those grim statistics can improve if more patients receive proper diagnosis and intervention sooner – two new technologies developed at Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga promise to do just that.
“This has a lot of ramifications for the city, not only for the health care of people in our region, but from a business development standpoint,” said Dr. Tom Devlin, director of Erlanger’s Neuroscience Institute and chairman of neurology at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine Chattanooga.
Strokes occur when either a blood clot or hemorrhage interrupts the brain’s blood supply. Unlike muscles, which are able to store energy, the brain relies second to second on blood flow carrying oxygen and sugar to keep cells alive.
Clots cause more than 80% of strokes, which result in about 1.9 million brain cells lost every minute the clot isn’t removed, Devlin said.