Medications to Treat Strokes

Video Transcript

"Hospital treatment of stroke. So after the patient has been to the hospital and they determine the best treatment, they determine that it indeed is a stroke, and if they can rule out that it is not Hemorrhagic Stroke, that it is an Ischemic Stroke, there's only one approved medication that can treat the new onset of stroke. That medication is Tissue Plasminogen Activator. It's known as TPA in the Hospital. Basically how it works is it works to break up the clot and it works to break up the clot and allow blood flow to the area that's not getting the oxygen. The reason it's so important to get the patient to the hospital quickly aside from the loss of brain function is because this medication can only work within 3 hours of the onset of symptoms. Another thing about this medication is if they're going to give it within 3 hours of the onset and the patient was sleeping, they count the time that the patient went to bed as the onset. So a lot of times that will offset the use of the drug that someone that has woken up and noticed that they have signs of symptoms of a stroke. There are several studies out there that are being done, but as of now that's the only one that is proven to treat strokes. They can also, at the hospital they can also do other tests and make sure that it is definitely a stroke and that it's not something else that's causing these symptoms. "