Recent advances in cone beam technology mean neurointerventionalists are able to diagnose a patient with large vessel occlusion without a CT scan or trip to the emergency department—possibly reducing time to care by as much as an hour.
Nicole Cancelliere, an interventional clinical research technologist at Toronto Western Hospital who led an investigation into the subject, said in a release the new stroke imaging tech will allow patients to bypass the ER and head straight to an angiosuite, where they’ll be able to undergo endovascular thrombectomy 60 minutes before they would’ve before.
That gives patients more of a chance at a full recovery and could significantly change their outcomes, Cancelliere said.
“By using this technology in the angiosuite, hospitals can reduce intra-facility transfer delays and hence the time of stroke symptom onset to treatment, which will significantly reduce brain damage and improve outcomes for patients,” she said.
Cancelliere and her team found the cone beam imaging software compared well with baseline and follow-up CTs and can accurately detect hemorrhage, occlusion site, ischemic core and tissue at risk.
The researchers presented their findings this week at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery’s 15th annual meeting in San Francisco, California. Their paper has been published in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery.
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.