MIAMI – North Shore Medical Center, a 357-bed acute care hospital in Miami, announced that their new Primary Stroke Center is live as of December 9th.
A primary stroke care center combines the resources of a number of specialties to quickly evaluate and treat patients with complex medical needs.
The hospital stroke team includes physicians such as Emergency Department physicians, neurologists, neurosurgeons, interventional radiologists, and radiologists who specialize in the care of strokes. The team is available around the clock to respond when a patient with stroke symptoms comes to the hospital. The Brain Attack Coalition, a group of 14 national organizations developed joint recommendations for hospitals to create stroke care centers as a way to improve the quality of care for stroke patients.
Manny Linares, CEO of North Shore Medical Center said, “At North Shore Medical Center, we believe that the Stroke Center will help us diagnose and treat strokes more quickly. We now have the ability to use evidence-based medicine to establish written protocols for stroke care that are designed to improve patient care and quickly get them the care they need. These protocols have proven to reduce the number of stroke-related complications, which lead to improved quality of life for our patients.”
A stroke is an emergency requiring immediate medical attention. Strokes occur when blood flow to the brain is interrupted, causing brain cells to begin dying from lack of oxygenated blood.
About 780,000 people in the United States have a new or recurrent stroke each year. Every 40 seconds someone will have a stroke. Every three to four minutes, someone dies from a stroke.
Common symptoms of a Stroke include: numbness or weakness in the body, trouble speaking and understanding, dizziness or loss of balance or coordination, trouble seeing in one of both eyes and severe headache with no known reason.
High blood pressure is the number one risk factor for stroke and smokers double their risk of getting the disease. Women who take estrogen plus progestin raise their risk of ischemic stoke by 44 percent.
