The main goal in stroke treatment: saving brain.
Time is brain, the saying goes. The faster people get treatment for a stroke, the less brain damage they suffer. A new study says much faster is much better, especially for mild and moderate strokes.
People treated with a clotbusting drug within 90 minutes of having symptoms of a stroke had excellent recoveries, with less lasting disability.
The scientists compared the records of 6,856 people who were treated for strokes in 10 European stroke centers. About 20 percent of the people were treated with clotbusting drugs within 90 minutes of reporting sudden symptoms like vision problems, weakness in a limb, or difficulty talking.
"What this just reinforces is that earlier is better," says Dr. Larry Goldstein, a professor of neurology and director of the Duke Comprehensive Stroke Center. "There's nothing magical about 90 minutes."
That 90 minutes was the cutoff picked by the researchers in the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Stroke. Clotbusting drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use within three hours of symptoms, but Goldstein says "three hours was never good enough."
The real gold standard in the United States is treatment within an hour after a patient comes in the emergency room door, but that's not easy to do.
The only way that can even remotely happen is in places organized to give stroke care," Goldstein, who is a spokesman for the American Heart Association but did not participate in the research, told Shots.
FAST: A simple way to remember at least some stroke symptoms.
FAST: A simple way to remember at least some stroke symptoms.
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For Strokes, Superfast Treatment Means Better Recovery