Featured News - Current News - Archived News - News Categories

Mount St. Mary's celebrates stroke achievements

by jmaloni

Press release

Tue, May 28th 2013 11:20 am

Congratulations are in order for the team that oversees the stroke care program at Mount St. Mary's for earning the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award and Target Stroke Honor Roll designation.

In a ceremony to celebrate the awards, from left, hospital President and CEO Judy Maness was joined by stroke patient survivor Edgar Hayes of Lewiston, stroke program medical director Dr. Gregory Sambucci, clinical excellence coordinator Rosanne Schavi, and the American Heart and American Stroke Association of Western New York's executive director, Liz Zulawski, and quality improvement director, Roseanne Hemmitt.

Over a 12-month period, at least 50 percent of the hospital's eligible ischemic stroke patients received tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, within 60 minutes of arriving at the hospital (known as "door-to-needle" time).

A thrombolytic, or clot-busting agent, tPA is the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the urgent treatment of ischemic stroke. If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, tPA has been shown to significantly reverse the effects of stroke and reduce permanent disability.

"With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award and Target Stroke Honor Roll demonstrates Mount St. Mary's commitment to being one of the top hospitals in the country for providing aggressive, proven stroke care," Maness said. "We will continue with our focus on providing evidence-based care, i.e., care that has been shown in scientific literature to quickly and efficiently treat stroke patients with proven protocols."

Hometown News

View All News