The Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology (SVIN) launches Mission Thrombectomy 2020, an initiative to help increase the practice of stroke thrombectomy among eligible patients and reduce the global rate of stroke disability.
“Mission Thrombectomy 2020 advances the overall mission of SVIN of innovation to improve outcomes of the largest number of stroke patients all over the world,” says Raul Nogueira, MD, President of SVIN. “This campaign will consolidate various efforts from multiple stakeholders with a clear patient metric to be achieved in three years.”
Stroke thrombectomy, also known as mechanical thrombectomy, can help reverse paralysis from stroke in more than 60% of patients if performed within 6 hours of stroke symptoms, according to a media release from Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology.
Less than 100,000 of such procedures were performed worldwide in 2016. However, the initiative aims to increase this number to 202,000 annually by 2020.
“In 2015, mechanical thrombectomy was definitively proven to be enormously beneficial in reversing stroke disability and become standard of care for stroke patients with blockage of one of the main brain arteries. This has revolutionized the treatment for such patients,” says Dr Dileep Yavagal, MD, past president of SVIN, who is leading this effort.
“SVIN has set an ambitious worldwide goal to treat every eligible stroke patients emergently with mechanical thrombectomy, but this can only be achieved if we maximize access to hospitals with mechanical thrombectomy capability of severe stroke with within 6 hours of their symptoms,” he adds, in the release.
In order to increase patient access to this procedure, SVIN will partner with several non-profit medical societies, and governmental and industry collaborators, worldwide. Their focus will be on increasing efforts to improve public awareness for stroke symptoms, supporting legislation to encourage rapid triage of stroke patients, establishing financial initiatives to improve access to care for countries without health insurance, and encouraging the development of new technologies to improve stroke assessment and treatment, the release states.
“We are pleased to support SVIN on this important initiative to improve stroke treatment worldwide and help reduce the disability associated with this condition,” states Robert Hamilton, co-founder & chief science officer of Neural Analytics. “A critical component for effective stroke treatment is determining an accurate diagnosis as quickly as possible in settings inside and outside the hospital.”
During SVIN’s 9th Annual Meeting and 4th Annual Stroke Center Workshop, where this initiative was announced, Neural Analytics demonstrated its Lucid System, a device designed to help improve rapid assessment of patients with brain blood flow disorders.
[Source(s): Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology, Business Wire]
