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The Dartmouth
March 29, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

DHMC participates in new telestroke collaborative

5.23.13.news.DHMC
5.23.13.news.DHMC

On Halloween, a 52-year old woman with a sudden onset of left-sided paralysis was brought into Catholic Medical Center emergency room in Manchester. Doctors at the hospital videoconferenced with stroke specialists participating in the new Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Mayo Clinic joint telestroke program, who assessed the patient, looked at a CAT scan of her brain and recommended a clot-busting drug. Within an hour after being administered the drug, the patient was able to move the left side of her body.

The Catholic Medical Center is the first hospital to participate in the telestroke program, announced in late October. The program enables vascular neurologists at academic medical centers to connect with emergency rooms in rural hospitals, which often do not have access to necessary resources and expertise to treat stroke patients.

Mayo Clinic Telestroke program director Bart Demaerschalk said the collaborative telestroke program marks the first time two large academic health centers with experience in telemedicine are working together to provide emergency services to a region.

“From my perspective and from Mayo Clinic’s perspective, it is an absolute honor and privilege to be working collaboratively with Dartmouth-Hitchcock on these common goals of building, deploying and expanding telescope networks,” he said.

The telestroke program has a 96 percent accurate diagnosis rate and reduces air and ground ambulance transfer by 60 percent, Demaerschalk said.

“The morbidity and mortality outcomes of stroke patients treated by telemedicine are compatible to outcomes of patients treated by the Mayo Clinic primary center,” he said.

In the next few years, the telestroke program will expand to the 20 that are hospitals part of the Center for Rural Emergency Services and Trauma network, a DHMC initiative that aims to support local care and improve transfer processes. The hospitals hope to eventually provide the same type of care for victims of other medical emergencies, DHMC Center for Telehealth medical co-director Sarah Pletcher said.

The use of telecommunication is considered revolutionary in treating stroke victims because the window of time to save a victim’s life is usually only a few hours. Collaborating with DHMC will provide improved assessments, diagnoses and treatment for stroke patients at regional hospitals. More timely and accurate diagnoses through telestroke programs may reduce the likelihood of death and long-term harm, shorten hospital stays and lower costs.

The telestroke program is especially helpful in the rural Northeast, where hospitals frequently lack experts and resources. The program will allow patients to receive expert care close to home, easing their physical and financial burdens, Pletcher told The Valley News.

The telestroke program was originally founded by the Mayo Clinic in 2007, and three active Mayo Clinic centers located in Rochester, Minn., Jacksonville and Phoenix provide telestroke care to nearly 30 hospitals in seven states. Mayo neurologists have already used the program to communicate with doctors at distant hospitals around 4,000 times.