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Baylor Medical Center at Garland

 
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Every Minute Counts 

Treating a Stroke Quickly Means Less Damage

Stroke is a leading cause of disability in the United States, so time to treatment is critical.

“The sooner the patient can get to the hospital, the more we can do to stop the stroke and limit the long-term damage,” says Jared Wolf, M.D., emergency medicine physician on the medical staff at Baylor Medical Center at Garland.

“We have a three-hour window to start our stroke protocol, but with interventional options we can extend this window slightly, so it is important to come quickly.”

In the emergency department, treatment begins right away with an IV, blood work and a CT scan to diagnose the cause of the stroke.

“A hemorrhagic stroke means they’ve had a bleed in the brain,” says Dr. Wolf. But if the scan shows no blood in the brain, that’s an ischemic stroke, meaning a blood clot in one of the arteries has cut off the blood flow. The standard treatment for ischemic stroke is the potent drug tPA, which dissolves the blood clot.

If a patient has had recent surgery, is taking blood thinners, or has had a recent stroke, the risk of complications from tPA outweighs the benefits. But most patients meet the criteria to receive the drug, Dr. Wolf says.

Stroke patients in the Baylor Garland emergency department benefit from the shared partnership among all hospitals in the Baylor Health Care System, because the stroke protocol includes transfer to Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.

Through the Stroke Program at Baylor Dallas, patients have access to advanced treatment options, including endovascular procedures in the interventional neuroradiology department.

Whether the tPA is administered at Baylor Garland or they wait until the patient is at Baylor Dallas “depends on how close the patient is to falling out of that three-hour window since their symptoms started,” says Dr. Wolf. Baylor Garland is currently working toward accreditation for its own stroke program.