Saving lives with post-stroke surgery
30 July 2018
Professor of Clinical Neurology and Deputy Director of the Centre for Brain Research, Alan Barber, discusses the importance of receiving prompt medical attention following a stroke.
A life-saving clot retrieval procedure can save the lives of patients who get to hospital within the first six hours of having an ischaemic stroke (caused by a blood clot).
The clot can be removed using a mesh like retrieval device, freeing the clot from the brain. Getting a patient to hospital quickly following symptoms of a stroke can be life-saving with longer delays indicating poorer outcomes.
Professor Alan Barber has been leading this procedure along with interventional neuroradiologist Dr Stefan Brew.
Already around 270 people have been treated at Auckland City Hospital, comprising about two thirds of all clot retrieval procedures in New Zealand. The success of this procedure has led to it being launched in hospitals in Wellington and Christchurch this year.