People’s Daily Online, Shenyang, October 30 (Yin Bohan) On October 29, the 17th World Stroke Day, the 5th Northern Stroke Summit Forum with the theme of “Identifying Stroke Symptoms and Seizing Precious Time” was officially opened.
The scene of the Northern Stroke Summit Forum. Photo by Yin Baihan of People’s Daily Online
The event was led by the National Regional Medical Center and the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, the chairman unit of the Liaoning Provincial Cerebrovascular Disease Specialist Alliance. At the forum, the participating experts conducted in-depth exchanges and discussions on the hot issues of stroke. They all said that the prevention and treatment of stroke requires the efforts of medical staff, and it is also necessary to encourage and fully mobilize the forces of all sectors of society to participate, so that more people can pay attention to it and jointly build a “full life cycle” protection network.
Stroke, also known as “cerebral apoplexy”, is a general term for a group of diseases caused by sudden blockage or rupture of cerebral blood vessels, which is often referred to as “cerebral infarction”, “cerebral thrombosis” and “brain hemorrhage”. Stroke has the characteristics of high morbidity, high mortality, high disability rate and high recurrence rate, and is the number one killer of human health. According to the “China Stroke Center Report 2020”, in 2020, the number of stroke patients aged 40 and above in my country will be approximately 17.8 million. Stroke has become the leading cause of death and disability among adults in my country.
Li Zhiqing, Director of the Hunnan Stroke Center Ward and Deputy Director of the Stroke Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University. Photo by Yin Baihan of People’s Daily Online
“Treatment of stroke patients is a race against death. Especially for ischemic stroke, the golden time window for traditional drug intravenous thrombolysis is 4.5 hours, while the golden time window for mechanical thrombectomy is 6 hours. According to the patient’s condition, the time window for thrombectomy can be extended to 24 hours.” Li Zhiqing, director of the ward of the Hunnan Stroke Center and deputy director of the Stroke Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, introduced.
To identify stroke early, it is necessary to master the early identification tool of stroke, which is the “BE FAST formula”. The first 5 letters of BE FAST each represent an early symptom suggesting a possible stroke: “B” – Balance refers to balance, loss of balance or coordination, sudden difficulty walking; “E” – Eyes refers to eyes, sudden Changes in vision, difficulty seeing; “F” – Face refers to the face, face asymmetry, slanted corners of the mouth; “A” – Arms refers to the arms, a sudden feeling of weakness or numbness in the arms, usually on one side of the body; “S” – Speech refers to language, you can’t understand other people’s language when you speak vaguely; “T” – Time refers to time. Once you find stroke symptoms, don’t wait for the symptoms to disappear on their own, you need to call 120 immediately to get medical assistance.
Stroke is preventable and treatable, but due to many reasons such as the lack of promotion of the frontier concepts of stroke diagnosis and treatment, and the unobstructed treatment network, stroke patients have lost the opportunity of early detection and early treatment.
“In order to effectively open the green channel of life for stroke patients, the stroke center of the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University has integrated the hospital’s neurology, neurosurgery, emergency department, imaging department, laboratory department, interventional operating room and other department resources. The series treatment mode is changed to parallel mode operation, and emergency nurses give priority to blood draw and medication for stroke patients.” Zhao Shanshan, professor and chief physician of the Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, said: “With the blessing of these measures, stroke patients can go from admission to hospital. The time to start treatment has been shortened from the previous average of 96 minutes to an average of 45 minutes, and the treatment efficiency has been greatly improved.”
Zhao Shanshan, professor and chief physician of the Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University. Photo by Yin Baihan of People’s Daily Online
The launch of this North Stroke Summit Forum has promoted the popularization of education on the frontier concepts of stroke diagnosis and treatment and the promotion and application of appropriate technologies, in order to improve the ability of stroke identification and treatment in the region, and to concentrate efforts.
Teng Weiyu, vice president of the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, said that he hoped to take advantage of the opportunity of this forum to give full play to the regional radiation role of the hospital’s stroke center in view of the incidence of stroke in Liaoning Province and the unbalanced development of stroke prevention and treatment in different regions, and to cooperate with Liaoning Province. Even medical institutions at all levels in the three northeastern provinces have jointly explored and established a regional stroke classification diagnosis and treatment system, actively built a provincial stroke prevention and control network, carried out stroke identification, scientific transfer, standardized training and education work at different levels, and promoted standardized stroke diagnosis and treatment.