A network of stroke centers is boosting the number of local residents getting top care for their symptoms, according to an article by a University of California, Irvine, neurologist.
Steven Cramer and colleagues found that 20% of Orange County patients who suffered ischemic strokes were given tPA, a clot-busting drug, in time to reverse or reduce the stroke’s effect. By contrast, only 3% to 5% of all American stroke patients received the drug in time.
OC’s stroke system calls for paramedics and ambulances to take patients with acute stroke symptoms to one of nine hub hospitals. Those include UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, Newport Beach-based Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian and Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, along with others in North OC.
Those hospitals act as receiving centers for victims of stroke, offering sophisticated neurovascular care and have specialists available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Sixteen other local hospitals, called “spokes,” send their stroke cases to those hub hospitals.
Cramer called the results “an enormous improvement in the level of stroke care” for area residents.
“People who have strokes are now walking out of hospitals,” Cramer said.
The study looked at 1,360 stroke cases from the plan’s first year. It said that one major component was ensuring that patients have access to hospitals with neurointerventional radiologists.
Such doctors can remove a clot by threading a catheter through a leg artery and into the brain. When the stroke network was created in 2009, only four county hospitals had around-the-clock availability of such doctors; today six receive such patients from spoke hospitals.
Some things still need to be worked out.
“The study shows that older adults and Hispanics are not reaping the benefits of this system to the same extent,” Cramer said. He added that those groups were less likely than other OC residents to receive high-level stroke care.
The study results were published in Stroke, a professional journal of the American Heart Association.
Cramer, a stroke neurologist, led the creation of the network. He co-authored the study with Samuel Stratton, medical director of Orange County Emergency Services.
Leaders Honored
Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, located on University of California, Irvine’s campus, hosted a recent ophthalmic innovation symposium with Columbia, Md.-based Foundation Fighting Blindness at the Fairmont Hotel in Newport Beach.
Academics, venture capitalists and eye company executives all participated in the symposium, devoted to advancing treatments for eye diseases from the laboratory to patients.
Participating companies included Irvine-based Allergan Inc.; Alcon Inc., which has an operation in Irvine; Bausch & Lomb Inc., whose surgical hub is in Aliso Viejo; Santa Ana-based Abbott Medical Optics; and several startups such as Laguna Hills-based Glaukos Inc., which is working on a glaucoma treatment.
Symposium program chairs were William Link, a Newport Beach-based managing director for Versant Ventures and Baruch Kuppermann, a UC Irvine professor.
After the symposium a dinner honored Tibor Juhasz, a UC Irvine professor who is a vice president at Aliso Viejo startup company LenSx Lasers Inc.; Steven Ryan, president of the Doheny Eye Institute and Richard Kratz, a retired UCI professor who is a member of the Herbert institute’s board. Proceeds from the dinner benefited the foundation’s research efforts for vision-robbing retinal degenerative diseases, as well as the Herbert institute’s building of a $31 million, 70,000-square-foot institute facility expected to be completed next year.
Link co-chaired the dinner with James Mazzo, president of Abbott Medical Optics.
Upbeat Prospects
An analyst’s report suggests stocks of publicly traded hospital chains should continue to rise if certain economic trends continue.
Leerink Swann LLC analyst Jason Gurda noted that a study of 65 hospital administrators showed their facilities showed improved inpatient and outpatient volume growth in the first two months of 2012.
Adjusted for a leap year skew, inpatient volumes would have declined during the period, while outpatient activity would be slightly positive, Gurda said.
The modestly positive situation can develop into a brighter one if the job market continues to improve, he said. That would bolster the health-costs payer mix and help to improve Medicare reimbursements, the analyst reasoned.
“We believe the stocks can continue to move higher near-term,” Gurda wrote.
