Stroke Center
Patients with Stroke should be Treated at Stroke Center.
Time restriction for treatment of patients with acute stroke leads to a need for a hospital organization and experienced and specialist team work to ensure that treatment is started following a quick and meticulous evaluation. This can only be possible with “Stroke Centers" founded in this end. Stroke Center is one of the most important constituents not only in emergency treatments but also in early rehabilitation therapies provided for the patients.
What is stroke?
Stroke occurs when the critical blood and oxygen supply of brain is suddenly interrupted or reduced somehow due to vascular occlusion. Sometimes, it is manifested by bleeding into the cerebral tissue. When blood flow ceases, the cells start to die quickly at this location and temporary or permanent losses of function, also called paralysis, emerge at the location of the stroke.
Treatment of Stroke is a Race against Time
To prevent death of brain cells and spread of the damage, vascular occlusion should be immediately eliminated. Quick treatment means early and fast recovery in the stroke.
A drug that breaks up clots is administered into a vein and it is useful, if it can be administered not later than the first 4.5 hours after symptoms of stroke emerge.
The blood clot located in the vessel is removed out using a special retractable stent with femoral angiography, as is the case with eliminating the occlusion of a coronary artery in heart attacks. It should be performed quickly within the first 6 hours after the stroke. It can be employed up to first 24 hours after the stroke in patients with intact and/or protectable brain tissue that is shown by special brain imaging modalities.
- Various Disciplines Serve Patients at Cerebral Angiography and Stroke Center
The stroke team consists of neurologists, interventional neurologist, interventional neuroradiologists, experienced stroke nurses, neuroangiography technicians, physiatrists, physiotherapists, and speech and language, swallowing, occupational therapists.
This team cooperates very closely with emergency medicine, neurosurgery, anesthesiology and reanimation, cardiology and neurology physicians.
- Certain Therapies Practiced at Cerebral Angiography and Stroke Center For Neurovascular Occlusive Diseases;
Intravenous thrombolysis (an intravenous drug that breaks up clots)
Thrombectomy (angiographic removal of clot)
Stent therapy, which is an effective way to prevent recurrence of stroke, is used for stenoses of coronary arteries and other vessels feeding the brain. The treatment is based on inserting a stent – wire cages – and dilating the stenotic segment.
- Hemorrhagic Neurovascular Diseases
The aneurysm that develops in deep parts of the brain is accessed with angiographic method, or in other words, the cerebral tissue is untouched, and the lumen of the aneurysm is filled in or a stent is placed to repair the condition.
Angiographic occlusive treatments of abnormal vascular plexuses (Arteriovenous malformation - AVM) and fistulas - also called arterivenous fistula (AVF) - that may result in cerebral hemorrhage aim to prevent the first or recurrent hemorrhages which are likely to happen in the future.