Overlake Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Quality Achievement Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association for the treatment of stroke patients. The guidelines help helps hospital teams provide up-to-date, research-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. Overlake earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include aggressive use of medications and risk-reduction therapies aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients. The hospital also received the associations Target: Stroke Honor Roll for meeting stroke quality measures that reduce the time between hospital arrival and treatment with the clot-buster tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. People who suffer a stroke who receive the drug within three hours of the onset of symptoms may recover quicker and be less likely to suffer severe disability. Excerpt from: Overlake Hospital gets award for stroke care … Continue reading →

Toronto, ON (PRWEB) June 03, 2014 Approximately one-in-three Ontarians will develop stroke, dementia or both, and the incidence for each increases the risk of the other. That was the message as three Ontario health organizations came together during Stroke Month to raise awareness for stroke and dementia. The Ontario Stroke Network, the Alzheimers Society of Ontario and the Heart and Stroke Foundation have joined forces to highlight the fact that stroke, dementia and heart disease share common risk factors, each increasing the odds of the other while the same healthy lifestyle can mitigate the risks. Vascular cognitive impairment affects up to 60 per cent of stroke survivors and is associated with poorer recovery and decreased ability to function, said Ontario Stroke Network Executive Director Christina O'Callaghan. Improving the care system by identifying opportunities for collaboration toward healthier lifestyles in general and a treatment approach that recognizes and addresses possible co-morbidities, will benefit all Ontarians. Dr. Sandra Black, Director of the Brain Sciences Research Program at Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, said the public, physicians, patients and their care partners need knowledge and strategies to address disease prevention early diagnoses and disease management. Stroke is the second commonest cause of dementia, … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 3-Jun-2014 Contact: Michael Burton michael.burton@heart.org 214-706-1236 American Heart Association Chinese stroke patients were less likely to acquire pneumonia or die from the stroke when hospitals followed treatment guidelines, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2014. Closer adherence to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get With The Guidelines-Stroke led to a drop in pneumonia from 20 percent to almost 5 percent. However, only 55.5 percent of patients received all guideline-recommended treatments for which they were eligible. Developed with the goal to save lives and hasten recovery, Get With The Guidelines programs have touched the lives of nearly 5 million patients since 2001. Studies show that consistent application of these programs can lead to better recoveries and lower risks of ending up back in the hospital. "In China, stroke is the major cause of death and long-term disability and improving the quality of stroke care is a national priority," said Zixiao Li, M.D., the study's lead author and a neurologist at Capital Medical University's teaching hospital in Beijing, Beijing Tiantan Hospital. "Practitioners should make efforts to increase adherence to all stroke performance measures." Researchers looked at 24,597 … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise PHILADELPHIATeenage girls with a familial or genetic risk for breast cancer worry more about getting the disease, even when their mother has no history, compared to girls their age with no known high risks, according to new data presented today by researchers from Penn Medicines Abramson Cancer Center at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago (Abstract #9527). Early analyses suggest that such worry may increase risk behavior, such as smoking and potentially alcohol use, but does not appear to influence positive behavior, such as exercise. For the study, Angela Bradbury, MD, assistant professor of Medicine in the division of Hematology-Oncology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of the Pennsylvania, and colleagues from Penn Medicine and Fox Chase Cancer Center, evaluated psychosocial adjustments (cancer specific worry, anxiety and depression) and health behaviors in 320 girls aged 13 to 19 (208 were classified as high risk and 112 were classified as being at the general population risk). Girls were considered high risk if they had a parent with a BRCA1/2 mutation or at least one relative with a history of breast cancer. Girls were … Continue reading →