ALTON – On Feb. 26, three patients came to the Alton Memorial Hospital Emergency Department with stroke symptoms that received intervention with Alteplase, or t-PA. This is a drug used for the treatment of ischemic stroke and is recommended to be given as soon as possible to eligible patients.
“This is very unusual considering the fact that only two patients were treated with Alteplase during the entire month of January,” said Kyle Ogle, stroke coordinator at AMH. “During this challenging time, our hospital staff (ED nurses, physicians, radiology, pharmacy, laboratory) did exceptional work. All of the patients were treated with this drug in less than 60 minutes from the time they arrived.”
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Based on a study that describes how many brain neurons, synapses, and miles of myelinated fibers are lost every hour without intervention for ischemic stroke, the following numbers were extracted to show what exactly was saved that day:
- 36.1 million neurons
- 266 billion synapses
- 145 miles of myelinated fibers
The patients all had a diagnosis of acute stroke and are recovering. As a result of the great work done that day, the ED was presented with a cake recently from Genentech (the pharmaceutical company which provides t-PA).
Attending physicians were Dr. Raghu Kanumuri and Dr. Raymond Hughes. ER staff who treated the patients were Donna Darr, Beth Nevins, Jennifer Womack, Toni Smith and Jessica Curtner
