Ohio State Telestroke program saves lives

[Text on screen: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Ohio State Telestroke program saves lives]

[Music playing]

[Text on screen: Cynthia
Telestroke Patient]

Cynthia: When I had my stroke, I was 76. So I was sitting in the living room. I had my iPad, I had my phone, I had my TV show streaming and I went to upright my sofa and my left leg slipped into the mechanism and got caught there. I couldn't get it out and I went to reach down to help with the lever and I couldn't get my leg out. I picked up my phone and I called my son-in-law and I couldn't speak. So I just called 911 and they realized that something had happened, that I had had some sort of a stroke and decided they needed to take me up to the hospital.

[Text on screen: Deepak Gulati, MD
Neurologist
Ohio State Wexner Medical Center]

[Text on screen:
Balance
Eye
Face
Arm
Speech
Time - Call 911]

Deepak Gulati, MD: We use the acronym B FAST where the B stands for balance, E is for eye, F is for face abnormalities in terms of asymmetry or drooling on one side, A is for arm or leg weakness, S is for speech, and time is to call 911 right away.

Cynthia: I currently live in Hillsboro, OH, which is a little town of about 6,000 in the middle of Highland County. Choosing where I decided to live, hospitals never crossed my mind. I mean, you just don't think about it. You don't think of yourself getting old. You don't think of strokes, heart attacks, any of that. I at least don't. They just, it never crossed my mind. And when I had the stroke that I had, I was so fortunate that other people had thought about it in advance.

[Text on screen: Deepak Gulati, MD
Neurologist
Ohio State Wexner Medical Center]

Deepak Gulati, MD: Telestroke is a program where we use real time audio video to connect the patients that are arriving at those hospitals where they don't have the immediate access to a bedside neurologist or a stroke expert. And through that interface, it's going to examine the patient, look at the images which are available to our stroke experts remotely, and after gathering all the information, make a decision to provide the treatment in a timely fashion.

Cynthia: I was teleported to a large, nationally known hospital, the neurology department at Ohio State University, and that person was there to determine whether or not I was a candidate for the TNK shot.

Deepak Gulati, MD: The team decided to administer a clot busting medicine. 

Cynthia: We didn't have to wait to get to Ohio State to get the shot. They could do it right there at Highland District Hospital. And then they put me in an ambulance and took me up to Ohio State. And then they started treating me from there. And in the ambulance, suddenly my voice was getting better. My left hand hadn't been working right, and all of a sudden it started working. So even going up in the ambulance, I was already getting some sort of recovery. I was in the old medical center. The CT showed something in the heart area so they schedule a cardiac MRI. I had the cardiac MRI on the 23rd which was a Monday and Sunday was the 22nd, which meant I got to go into the new medical center and it was beautiful.

[Text on screen: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
For more information, visit: wexnermedical.osu.edu/telestroke]

[Music fades]