I'm Roy Pizzarello I'm a retired cardiologist and I live in
New York City it was a February of 2011 and I was home vacuuming all of a sudden
I couldn't move my right arm or my right leg and I remember I couldn't I couldn't
speak and luckily I was right by the bed so I lay down on the bed
my wife came in and she saw right away that I was having a stroke it took
around 15 minutes for the ambulance to come and then probably another 15
minutes to get to the emergency room when Roy developed symptoms of a stroke
he was brought by ambulance to New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell our stroke
team was waiting for him in the emergency department it was discovered
that he had blockage of what we call the left middle cerebral artery
he was then treated with a clot-busting drug and then went immediately to the
angiography suite where he underwent a procedure to remove the blood clot Roy
benefited immensely from the treatments that we have because he got to the
hospital quickly the key to success is speed with which we deliver the
treatments
we're now in a situation where patients are getting to the hospital as fast as
they can but they're still not getting there fast
enough so we're moving into the next era of treatment which is to take the
treatment to the patient in the field time is so critical with a stroke
because with every minutes you will lose 1.9 million brain cells the history of
emergency medical services has always been about how quickly we could get to a
patient what we are looking to do here with the mobile stroke treatment unit is
truly transformational the mobile stroke treatment unit is a custom design
ambulance that has a specially designed CT scanner built into the ambulance so
that we can do brain scans in the field and we carry TPA with us we carry a
variety of other medications that can be delivered on the ambulance the goal
being that we can treat the patient with the critical medications that can make a
big difference we work collaboratively with the 9-1-1 dispatch operators to
develop specialized questions these questions are designed to make sure that
this unit gets appropriately routed we're collecting a huge amount of data
to compare the benefit of treatment on the mobile stroke unit to a standard
ambulance arrival to our emergency room the mobile stroke unit is an amazing
opportunity to identify stroke patients in the ultra early setting and target
these patients for clinical trials our researchers at the file family brain of
mine Research Institute are actively investigating which biomarkers of blood
imaging and examination are useful for determining long-term prognosis in the
stroke model we think that the monocytes in addition we are one of 25 selected
NIH funded regional coordinating centers for stroke net and our mission is
to streamline and lead exciting clinical research trials in stroke prevention
stroke treatments and stroke recovery having early intervention got me well
I've been very active I play tennis I go to the park a lot and my wife and I
travel about three to six months a year even though I had a stroke I have no
disability we are really pleased to have full support of the State Department of
Health as well as the Fire Department of New York without that support we would
not be able to launch the mobile stroke treatment unit this is a true
partnership between wild Cornell Medicine New York Presbyterian Hospital
and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons I think we're showing the rest
of the world that we really are the best in the field and that we will continue
to be a leader in health care and a leader in treating patients with stroke