New stroke treatment guidelines can save more lives by increasing the time frame

The American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Stroke Association (ASA) recently released guidelines that will be helpful in saving the lives of people who suffer from stroke by increasing the time frame for treatment from six hours to 24 hours. Doctors can use this time to remove or treat the clot that causes stroke. These new guidelines can be life saving for people who suffer from disability throughout their lives. These can be beneficial for one out of every three people who gets a stroke, depending on when they observe the symptoms for the first time.

Stroke is one of the most common problems in the United States, with a person getting a stroke every 40 minutes. Also, approximately 85% cases of stroke are ischemic stroke that are caused because of the blockage of a blood vessel that supplies brain to blood.

According to the new guidelines, the time span for the removal of clot is now 24 hours, instead of 6 hours. Also, they expanded the treatment eligibility for alteplase (rTPA), i.e., the only drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of ischemic stroke by dissolving the blood clots.

These new guidelines are recommended to follow as various studies proves that they can be game-changing for the treatment of stroke. In a 38-center clinical trial that was conducted by the researchers of the Stanford University School of Medicine (sponsored by the National Institute of Health), the researchers evaluated the blood flow data of the patients within two minutes with the help of a brain imaging software.

Around 300 hospitals all over the United States are already using the new brain imaging software known as RAPID, to identify the patients who can still get treatment for stroke even after their initial 6-hour duration for the treatment is over.