For the second straight year, Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) has received the American Stroke Association’s Get With The GuidelinesSM–Stroke (GWTG – Stroke) Gold Performance Achievement Award.

The award recognizes AGH’s commitment and success in implementing the highest standard of stroke care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment for at least 24 months according to nationally accepted standards and recommendations.
 

To receive the GWTG-Stroke Gold Performance Achievement Award, AGH demonstrated above 85% adherence in the GWTG–Stroke key measures for 24 or more consecutive months. These include aggressive use of medications like tPA, antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, DVT prophylaxis, cholesterol-reducing drugs, and smoking cessation.
 

“The American Stroke Association commends AGH for its success in implementing standards of care and protocols,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., national Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee Member and director of the acute stroke services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “The full implementation of acute care and secondary prevention recommendations and guidelines is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of stroke patients.” 

Each year more than 900 patients receive care at AGH’s Comprehensive Stroke Center.

The hospital is one of only four in western Pennsylvania certified as a Primary Stroke Center by the Joint Commission. National studies have shown that patients treated at Primary Stroke Centers receive the most advanced diagnostic and therapeutic care more quickly and with better results than those treated at other hospitals.
 

AGH’s inpatient stroke unit centralizes and coordinates the care of patients by the hospital’s multi-disciplinary stroke team. Such units are believed to lower patient morbidity and mortality rates. Still the only facility of its kind in the region, inpatient units are now a class 1 recommendation for stroke centers according to new guidelines published by the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association.
 

“With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and the GWTG–Stroke Gold Performance Achievement Award addresses the important element of time in the treatment of stroke patients,” said Ashis Tayal, M.D., director of AGH’s Comprehensive Stroke Center.
 

“We have established at AGH a comprehensive system for rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients admitted to the emergency department that includes 24-hour a day access to advanced brain imaging scans, onsite stroke neurologists to conduct patient evaluations and additional specialists with expertise in the use of clot-busting medications and other state-of-the-art therapies,” Dr. Tayal said.
 

Over the past two decades, AGH physicians have practiced on the cutting edge of diagnostic and therapeutic stroke care. In 2005, interventional radiologists at the hospital were the first in Pittsburgh to use a new minimally invasive technology, called the Merci Retriever, that removes blood clots from the brain up to eight hours after a stroke has occurred. More recently they became among the first in the country to a similar clot removing technology, called the Penumbra Stroke System,

AGH physicians also helped develop the use of intra-arterial tPA, a delicate procedure in which tPA, a blood thinning medication, is administered directly to the site of a blood clot in an effort to rapidly dissolve it.

“Stroke can be a devastating injury and patients clearly benefit from being treated at a medical center that not only offers around-the-clock-access to the most experienced stroke specialists but to the complete spectrum of advanced stroke treatment options,” said David Wright, M.D., a stroke neurologist and director of the AGH Inpatient Stroke Unit.

In addition to Drs. Tayal and Wright, AGH’s stroke program is also staffed by stroke neurologist Jon Brillman, M.D., who is chairman of the hospital’s Department of Neurology and a longtime regional leader in stroke care. Other key components of the program include some of the region’s foremost specialists in the fields of neurosurgery, interventional neuro-radiology, nursing, cardiology and rehabilitation.
 

GWTG Stroke advocates the “teachable moment,” the time soon after a patient has had a stroke, when they are most likely to listen to and follow their healthcare professionals’ guidance.
 

Studies demonstrate that patients who are taught how to manage their risk factors while still in the hospital reduce their risk of a second heart attack or stroke.
 

“Education of our patients and their caregivers about risk factors and stroke prevention is a critical element in the care that we provide to stroke patients. Our stroke unit staff, particularly the nurses, is an exceptional group of clinicians who are absolutely dedicated to this mission. The ASA’s Gold Performance Achievement Award is a reflection of the talent and dedication of every single member of our stroke team,” said Dr. Wright.
 

According to the American Stroke Association, each year approximately 700,000 people suffer a stroke — 500,000 are first attacks and 200,000 are recurrent. Of stroke survivors, 21 percent of men and 24 percent of women die within a year, and for those aged 65 and older, the percentage is even higher.