Hospitals increasingly give powerful clot-buster for stroke

In the good news front, more clot-caused stroke patients are receiving the powerful treatment tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA. This is especially true for those who arrive at a hospital quickly and assessed for safe use.

The numbers, to be sure, could be better. But now, you've got better odds of proper treatment than you might have had a decade ago. Check out the story on how hospitals are increasingly giving powerful clot-buster for stroke:

At these hospitals, use of tPA increased from 4 percent to 7 percent during the nine-year study period. Among patients who were quickly brought to hospital and did not have any medical conditions that would prevent safe use of the drug, tPA administration increased from 43 percent to 77 percent. ...

"Hospitals have put tremendous efforts in the past decade into increasing the number of patients who can be treated with intravenous tPA, and this paper suggests those efforts are paying off," study corresponding author Dr. Lee Schwamm, executive vice chair of neurology and director of stroke services at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, said in a hospital news release.

"Today, more than three-quarters of stroke patients who are eligible for IV tPA are getting this treatment at the more than 1,600 U.S. hospitals we studied," he added.

It's vital that a stroke patient get help quickly. Recognize the signs of a stroke and don't hesitate in getting aid!