Medical Center Hospital is seeing a steady stream of people having strokes.
“Oddly, COVID has increased our numbers just because whenever somebody gets COVID and even if they are asymptomatic and they show no symptoms it puts them at a higher risk for having a stroke and throwing a clot,” Stroke Coordinator Sophie Bassham said. “So we have been seeing a lot of younger patients that had COVID … coming in with strokes, or patients that do drugs they come in with strokes. I see that a lot now in the younger generation and then of course our older generation as well.”
Bassham said she has been the stroke coordinator at Medical Center for going on two years in March. She has been a nurse since 2012 and was most recently the emergency department director in Alpine.
Prior to that, she worked in Fort Stockton until her son became a nurse.
The brain needs a constant supply of blood, which carries the oxygen and nutrients it needs to function. Specific arteries supply blood to specific areas of the brain, the American Heart Association said in 2020. A stroke occurs when one of these arteries to the brain is either blocked or bursts, the Heart Association said.
Strokes to left brain can affect:
>> Speech and language problems.
>> Inability to read, write and learn new information.
>> Impaired ability to do math or to organize, reason, and analyze things.
>> Chewing or swallowing problems.
Stroke to right brain can affect:
>> Problems with depth perception or directions, such as up or down, and front and back.
>> Inability to be creative, such as painting a picture, or to appreciate art and music.
>> Failure to recognize the emotion in someone’s voice.
>> Easily distracted.
>> Impulsive behavior and poor judgment.
Bassham said MCH received the 2021 American Heart Association: Get With the Guidelines Gold Plus award for applying up-to-date evidence-based treatment to improve patient care and outcomes.
The acronym BEFAST is used to detect strokes.
>> B is for balance. Look for a sudden loss of balance.
>> E is for Eyes. Check for vision loss.
>> F is for face. Look for an uneven smile.
>> A is for arm. Check if one arm is weak.
>> S is for speech. Listen for slurred speech.
>> T is for time. Call 911 right away.
There is a Spanish version with the acronym AHORA, which stands for Andar; Hablar; Ojos; Rostro; Ambos Brazos o Plernas.
Bassham said it’s very important that patients not drive themselves to the hospital for the sake of speed in being seen and treated.
“They have like a four and a half hour window from the onset of their symptoms to when we are able to give them a medication that will help dissolve that clot and start getting them back to their baseline,” Bassham said.
“They have to be here within the four and a half hour window. That means we have to see them, get them into radiology to a CAT scan of their head and brain to make sure that they’re not having a brain bleed, and if they’re not having a brain bleed then we can turn around and give them that medication,” she said.
“But once they’re past that four and a half hour window, we can’t give them that medication,” Bassham added.
After that time, patients may show improvement, but it can take years.
“Healing from a stroke is not like they’ll get better after a month or two,” Bassham said. “This is a lifelong recovery depending on how severe their symptoms were.”
Depending on where the stroke is affecting the body, patients will undergo physical therapy, occupational therapy and they’ll be evaluated by a speech therapist.
“The physical therapist will go in and work with them and see if they’re able to walk. They’ll do some exercises with them; occupational, they’ll be doing the exercises like being able to feed themselves; speech therapy … they don’t just work with their speech … If they can’t talk, because some strokes affect the ability to talk but it also affects their ability to swallow water or food, so they assess that part to make sure that they’re able to tolerate anything to eat or drink, or even their pills. Those patients that can’t tolerate them, if they don’t get that test done then they risk complications from aspiration; get pneumonia. They can go into respiratory failure,” Bassham said.
Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death and disability in the United States.
Someone has a stroke about every 40 seconds and someone will die from a stroke about every four minutes according to the Heart Association, Bassham said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) between 41.9 and 44.8 people per 100,000 died from stroke in Ector County between 2013 and 2015, a column by Odessa Regional Medical Center Chief Nursing Officer Carol Cates said.
Among those individuals who are over 65 and on Medicare, there were 18.3-19.9 people per 1000 hospitalized for stroke between 2013 and 2015 here in Ector County, the column said.
“Eight-percent (80) of these strokes are preventable if we follow the right diet, we control our diabetes,” high blood pressure, making sure they take their medication, exercise, refrain from smoking and watch their cholesterol.
Some stroke symptoms are signs of other health issues.
“We have to really look at what their chief complaints are when they come to the hospital and we need to make sure that we’re ruling everything out just because it could be a number of things,” Bassham said.
The emergency medical services at Medical Center is trained to conduct stroke evaluations out in the field. If any of the symptoms are positive for stroke, they will alert the hospital so they are able to take them back to radiology and administer the medication as quickly as possible.
“If your parent, or your grandparent, or your sibling has a stroke that raises your risk for having a stroke. … The older we get the more chance we have for having a stroke. Women are actually more prone of dying from a stroke after one year of having it, but more men tend to have a stroke,” Bassham said.
Strokes in women are more likely to be severe.
“… Just like heart attacks, they are more likely to push it off and say well it’s something else that’s going on. Maybe I’m just tired, or stressed out. I just need to rest vs. the men tend to come to the hospital a lot faster than women do,” she added.
Bassham said women are too busy taking care of everybody else and they put aside their own needs.
“… We have a saying that for every minute and every hour that a patient doesn’t come to our hospital, their brain is slowly dying,” she added.
She added that a stroke can happen at any age.
“.. It can happen while a mom is pregnant. It can happen in children; it can happen after she even delivers the baby if her blood pressure is too high and she’s not controlling it. So age doesn’t mean you’re not going to have a stroke. It can happen at any age just really important that if you do smoke, you quit smoking. Having a stroke, you’re at 10-18 percent risk of having another stroke within the first year. Also people who are diabetic, it’s really important to keep them their A1C less than 7 percent and that’s only because it will double your chances of having a stroke,” Bassham said.
People also need to cut down on sodium, saturated and trans-fat.
“Because stroke can be such a lifelong recovery, here at Medical Center we’re actually one of the only hospitals in our region that has a stroke support group. We don’t sit around in a circle like AA. It’s more like everybody just comes together. We go bowling we go to the RockHounds games. We just have a lot of fun together. Then they’re able to just meet other, stroke survivors … They’re their own network because after somebody has a stroke, a lot of people tend to kind of distance themselves from family and friends and this … helps them help each other out. That is something that we do for them. It’s free for the stroke patient. It’s free for their caregivers; their family …,” Bassham said.
