Posted on: 5:58 pm, June 18, 2013, by Meryl Lin McKean, updated on: 06:20pm, June 18, 2013
KANSAS CITY, Mo. Will Johnson knows it could have been much worse.
I think it would have been bad because I wouldnt have been able to talk, Will says.
And Will thinks he wouldnt have been able to walk at all. Thats if the Grandview man had waited longer to call 9-1-1 when he was having a stroke.
An ambulance rushed him to Research Medical Center where a scan confirmed the stroke. Then he was injected with TPA, a drug to dissolve the blood clot in his brain.
TPA can be given up to four and a half hours after a stroke starts. A new study of nearly 60,000 patients, including Kansas City patients, confirms that the sooner within that time frame the drug is injected, the better.
The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that patients treated around 90 minutes after the onset thats just a little sooner than Will was treated were 26 percent less likely to die and 51 percent more likely to walk when they left the hospital compared to people who were treated after three hours.
The study found a higher risk of death and disability with every 15 minutes lost.
The more time we lose, the more nerve cells we lose in the brain, says Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed, a neurologist at Research.
Dr. Ahmed says dont think numbness on one side or trouble speaking will just go away with time. Call 9-1-1.
Original post:
Early stroke treatment saves lives, prevents disability