Female Speaker: These days, with medical miracles, you don't have to suffer the same damages from a stroke as you used to, right?
Owen R. Thompson: Many a times that's really true, not all the time, but many a times. And the key as we have discussed in other talks has been get to the hospital, access the EMS System, take action. But we really do have just phenomenal technologies available. We have medications now that are clot busters, and I had a patient one time who was totally paralyzed on the right side of her body. We got her to the emergency room, we gave her the clot busters, and an hour or later she was fine.
Female Speaker: Wow!
Owen R. Thompson: And these drugs go to the clot, dissolve the clot, allows the blood-flow to be restored to the affected area, and if you get it quick enough, before there is massive and irrevocable damage to the brain cells, they will come back, and it is literally amazing to see someone have that happen to them and then be able to get up and walk away from that. So those are - that was a wonderful drugs, as we know we use those for heart attacks and other clot dissolving -- where clots are problems and we need to dissolve them. But for stroke, it's amazing.
And then the other more invasive technologies are angiography and catheterization, literally putting plastic tubing up through the neck into the blood vessels inside the head and if people have a bleeding blood vessel, they can like in aneurysm, they can put these kind of like putting silly putty in there. It's not that simple. But it the blocks vessels and stops the bleeding.
They can go in and suck the clot out, and then take the clot out and then it is absolutely phenomenal what invasive radiologists, invasive neurologists can do. But again, you need to get to the hospital to have that done. But again, people who have those clots removed can have their brain functions saved and have it restored and have no damage or very minimal damage otherwise would be totally disabled for life or die from the event. So it's a miraculous ability.
Female Speaker: And that's what used to happen, people were incapacitated.
Owen R. Thompson: That is what used to happen. They were incapacitated, and stroke still is the number one disabler of adults in America, but the war is on and we are gaining ground. But the key here is getting in, accessing 911, getting in the ambulance or having somebody drive you and get to an emergency room as soon as possible.
Female Speaker: Alright. Thank you.
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