KEM gets a special clinic for stroke cases

MUMBAI : In a first, a city-based public hospital, King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEM), Parel, inaugurated a special stroke clinic on Wednesday.

According to doctors , awareness about strokes, a situation when blood stops flowing to any part of your brain, damaging brain cells, is very poor and as a result, patients are diagnosed and treated late, often leading to disabilities or deaths.

“There is one stroke patient every six seconds. Stroke often leaves with disability such as paralysis, speech problems if it is diagnosed late,” said Dr Nitin Dange, professor, department of neurology, KEM hospital.

Dange emphasised that when a stroke occurs, the first four- andhalf hours are the golden period for treatment during which doctors give thrombolytic injection to the patient to dissolve the clot.

While around 150 to 200 stroke patients visit KEM hospital every month, doctors could treat only 54 of them over the past two years as they were diagnosed in time.

KEM hospital, however, has now bought a new machine -Bi Plane DSA machine through which clots can be surgically removed up to 24 hours from the time of the stroke. “Through the machine, we can suck out the clot from the blocked artery in select patients,” said Dr Sangeeta Ravat, head of neurology department, KEM hospital.

The numbers of stroke patients have increased owing to the increase in incidence of diabetes, blood pressure, lack of exercise and poor diet, doctors said.