Healthy Living

Time is of the essence in stroke care – and so is the type of care that you receive.

It starts with the patient or family recognizing the signs and symptoms of stroke and calling 911 without delay.

Symptoms of a stroke can be remembered through the acronym FAST:

• Face: Does one side of the face droop?
• Arms: Does one arm drift downward when both arms are held up?
• Speech: Is speech slurred?
• Time: If a person shows any of these signs, call 911 immediately.

Once in the emergency department, initial assessment must be completed in minutes to determine what kind of care a patient needs.

Admission to a designated stroke unit is vital, which is what makes Backus Hospital’s recent recertification as a Primary Stroke Center by the state Department of Public Health so important. The two-year designation is part of a statewide initative to provide consistent, quality care to stroke patients.

Stroke centers have staff specifically trained to care for these types of patients under intense pressure. They are able to recognize medical complications that can arise in someone who has suffered a stroke, which is extremely important as stroke patients can worsen quickly within the first few hours or days after a stroke. In fact, even the mildest of strokes run a 10% risk of converting to larger ones in the first 48 hours.

Having a stroke center in your community is important to both the health and wellbeing of patients. To receive state designation you must submit data on stroke admissions, treatment plans, outcomes as well as stroke-specific staff education.

As part of being a stroke center, Backus offers its patients and staff access to multidisciplinary rounds. These provide a venue for professionals caring for stroke patients to share new information as well as to provide real-time quality review of patients currently receiving care at Backus. These rounds are often held at the patient’s bedside, with the patient playing an active role in the planning of his or her care.

Our goals are to decrease premature deaths and disabilities associated with stroke. We do everything we can to help each patient, but people can also help themselves.

Risk factors include:

• High blood pressure
• Atrial fibrillation
• Diabetes
• Smoking
• High cholesterol
• Lack of exercise
• Alcohol abuse
• Obesity.

The bad news is that 795,000 people suffer from strokes each year in the U.S. The good news is there is room for improvement, because 80 percent of them are preventable.

Cindy Arpin, is a registered nurse and Stroke Coordinator at The William W. Backus Hospital. The information in this column should not replace the advice of your personal physician. If you want to comment on this column or others, visit the Healthy Living blog at www.backushospital.org/backus-blogs or e-mail Ms. Arpin or any of the Healthy Living columnists at healthyliving@wwbh.org