Ukiah Valley Medical Center Works with California Pacific Medical Center to Enhance Stroke Care

1/25/2010 - Ukiah Valley Medical Center Works with California Pacific Medical Center to Enhance Stroke Care

For the last year, Ukiah Valley Medical Center has been working in partnership with Dr. David Tong, Chief of the Stroke Service at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) in San Francisco, to enable our Emergency Department physicians to treat patients in the Emergency Department with a specialized medication to break up blood clots which cause stroke.

This technique requires real-time neurology consultation to determine who might benefit from this treatment. Consultations with the CPMC Stroke Service are done at the bedside with a stroke neurologist who can examine the patient and talk to family members via robotic telecommunications. Brain scans are then reviewed by the neurologist electronically in consultation with the treating Emergency Department physician.

“This is cutting-edge technology cannot be done in a rural hospital such as ours without a neurologist on staff,” said Charlie Evans, MD, Medical Director of UVMC’s Emergency Services. “This is state-of-the-art emergency medicine, and clearly the direction of such specialized medicine in the future. We at UVMC are excited to be part of a program which offers our patients a potentially life-saving treatment previous unavailable in our community.”

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