In stroke, time is brain — and the best outcome usually follows the earliest diagnosis and treatment.
The primary treatment recommendation is thrombolytic therapy (tPA) administered within 60 minutes (or earlier) once the patient enters the emergency department, according to guidelines jointly endorsed by the American Heart and American Stroke associations.
Improving this door-to-needle time and the quality of care for stroke patients is the driving force behind UAB’s collaborative effort with Medscape to produce two online courses that respond to concerns about the use of tPA to resolve blood clots that lead to stroke. The continuing medical education programs were created based on input from UAB Medicine professionals.
The first course is “Assessing the Guidelines for Acute Ischemic Stroke Management.”
Brett Kissela, M.D., a leading expert in acute ischemic stroke from the University of Cincinnati, and Joshua Goldstein, M.D., an emergency physician and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, look at the mounting evidence from global studies showing clear benefits from the timely use of thrombolytic therapy.
In the second, “Interprofessional Approaches to Fast-Tracking Thrombolytic Therapy for Acute Ischemic Stroke,” UAB ED Nurse Manager India Alford joins Kissela and Goldstein to provide clinicians with practical strategies for streamlining the process of treating stroke patients with clot-dissolving drugs.
Learn more or complete the courses for CME credit at uab.edu/medicine/cme/stroke-project.
