Speed and the right place - more important than ever

Sooner the treatment, better the outcome.

You've read this before here - time is critical in getting a stroke patient to a stroke center hospital. Every minute counts.

You've also read about recent research on new stroke treatment. Now, read about how the new treatment calls for getting to the right place quickly:

That’s the implication of a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that the sooner patients with severe strokes receive a thrombectomy, the less disabled they tend to be three months later. The research indicates that the brain-saving benefits of thrombectomy are most pronounced within the first few hours after signs of a stroke begin, and that these effects decline with each passing hour.

To some experts, the study is a call to rejigger the current method of determining where ambulances ought to take stroke patients, which is based solely on proximity. Instead, they say, patients with apparent severe strokes should be rushed to hospitals that perform thrombectomies.

“This study emphasizes that speed is essential,” said Dr. Mitchell Elkind, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City and a spokesman for the American Stroke Association. “We have to be as efficient and quick as possible.”