ManilaMed’s stroke readiness takes lead on urban health issues

CONSTANTLY ranked among the leading causes of death, strokes continuously alarm people not only locally, but also globally as it causes paralysis and even mortality.

Dr. Jennifer Manzano, neurologist at ManilaMed, discussed that stroke occurs when blood flow to the brain is interrupted and causes brain damage. She also highlighted the urgency of stroke treatment as soon as the symptoms occur.

She explained, “You have to go to the emergency room right away. We can give treatment that may potentially decrease or even reverse the stroke if they come in within four hours of the stroke onset.”

“Time is Brain” reminds people that quick diagnosis and quick intervention is the key during the occurrence of stroke. For every minute a stroke gets untreated, 1.9 million of brain cells die. Every minute a stroke is not addressed, it turns to more disability.

As ManilaMed offers strokeready facilities, hospital personnel are specifically trained to address and identify stroke patients. “Training not just the nurses but the residents, ER staff, radiologists, lab techs, the entire hospital. We all need to get our acts together so we can be stroke ready,” Dr. Manzano shared.

According to Dr. Manzano, most hospitals in the Philippines are not stroke ready, especially outside Metro Manila. ManilaMed is just one of the few hospitals that are stroke ready. She warned the prevalent practice of lowering the BP right away.

“Sometimes patients and even non-stroke ready hospitals still adhere to the usual age-old practice. This may be harmful because if there’s blockage in the arteries supplying the brain, what the body does is it increases blood flow to the brain by increasing blood pressure. If you give them medicines under the tongue to lower the blood pressure, less blood would flow to the brain and the more that the stroke worsens.”

Since ManilaMed is becoming stroke ready, their medical technology continuously moves forward. They already had nine stroke patients who walked out of the hospital with less disability than when they came in.

As the key to spotting a stroke, Dr. Manzano recommends FAST as the easier way to educate the public, which means Face (face dropping), Arms (arms weakness), Speech (speech difficulties), and Time (time to go to the hospital).