FIU doctors join South Florida firefighters and hospitals in effort to save stroke victims’ lives

Doctors from the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at FIU are teaming up with fire rescue departments and hospitals in Miami-Dade County to help prevent deaths from strokes.

FIU is collaborating with all seven fire rescue departments in Miami-Dade and with 16 major hospitals to offer the best diagnosis, transport, and treatment of stroke victims. Today at FIU’s Modesto Maidique Campus they are launching the Fire Officers Association of Miami-Dade (FOAM-D) EMS Stroke Network.

“We are committed to working with our partners in the community to save lives,” said Dr. John Rock, founding dean of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and senior vice president for medical affairs at FIU. “This initiative is in line with our college’s mission of providing competent, compassionate care to our community.”

Two FIU physicians, Dr. Jeffrey Horstmyer, chairman of the Department of Neurology, and Dr. Alejandro Forteza, neurology professor and founder of the earlier Miami-Dade Stroke Coalition, were instrumental in designing the Stroke Alert. The Stroke Alert is a two-page checklist to help emergency crews determine if a patient is having a stroke, how serious the stroke is, and which hospital can offer the best treatment.

“The goal of this initiative is to drastically improve a patient’s quality of life after a stroke,” Horstmyer said.

According to the American Heart Association, every 3.3 minutes someone in the United States dies from a stroke. For those who survive, “time is brain” – the brain loses 1.9 million neurons (brain cells) each minute a stroke goes untreated. A stroke patient’s brain ages 3.6 years for each hour without treatment.

Under the Stroke Network, hospitals are designated as either a Primary or Comprehensive stroke center. Primary facilities are able to provide care to stroke victims who are within the 3.5-hour window that allows for the use of the clot-busting drug TPA (tissue plasminogen activator). The most serious cases and those past the critical 3.5-hour window will be transported to a comprehensive facility staffed by an interventional neuroradiologist.

These highly specialized physicians can deliver the medication through a catheter, directly to the part of the brain where the stroke is occurring, or remove the blood clot through the catheter. Five of the seven interventional neuroradiologists in Miami-Dade County are on the faculty at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. They are doctors Alex Marcos Barrocas, John C. Chaloupka, Guilherme Dabus, Italo Linfante and Edgard Pereira.