EUGENE SCHARF: There has never been a more exciting time to be in this field, to be honest with you. If a person has a stroke, the risk of stroke recurrence is around anywhere between 1% to 5%.
ROBERT BROWN, JR.: A stroke is either a lack of blood supply to the brain tissue, or there are also bleeding types of stroke, in which for whatever reason, there is a spillage of blood into the brain tissue, leading to a brain hemorrhage. About 7 to 800,000 people each year in the US have a stroke.
EUGENE SCHARF: Many people can avert a surgery and a stroke with adequate use of medical risk factor modification, such as lipid lowering therapies blood thinners, and blood pressure control. And medical therapies have advanced in the last 20 years, that have reduced the risk of subsequent stroke substantially.
ROBERT BROWN, JR.: We can use innovation in imaging techniques, to help to guide the patient regarding the optimal management and in stroke prevention.
HARRY CLOFT: Another major recent advance is that we are able to now, quite successfully, remove clots out of arteries that are causing an acute stroke. So patient will present to the emergency room with sudden onset of weakness or difficulty talking, and the culture has really changed to get these patients to us quickly. And then we can get them into our angiography suite, and do what we call the thrombectomy.
ROBERT BROWN, JR.: Some patients, who would have had a devastating stroke, come out of the hospital with no deficit. No difficulties whatsoever.
EUGENE SCHARF: We look at the whole patient, and look at every single thing that could possibly happen, and then discuss what is in the patient's best interest in terms of how to maximize quality of life and disability-free life, which is ultimately what we're here for.
