A team of professionals from Hospital Sant Joan de Déu in Barcelona, he treated a 16-year-old boy who had suffered a ictus and managed to regain lost mobility.
The patient arrived at the center with a complete paralysis on the right side of his body and received a fibrinolytic treatment, which consists of the intravenous administration of a drug that dissolves the clot and restores blood flow to get the brain injury have as little impact as possible.
Fibrinolytic treatment consists of administering a drug that dissolves the clot and restores blood flow to the brain.
Ten minutes after starting treatment, he began to regain mobility of the right leg and arm. He is currently fully recovered and only needs to follow the controls.
One of the disadvantages of using fibrinolytic treatment or intravenous thrombolysis in children – and this explains why it has not been used until now, although it is used in adults – is that it is a medicine that has been little studied in minors. In addition, this treatment should be administered within four and a half hours after the patient experiences the first symptoms.
The importance of rapid diagnosis in children
“Most pediatric strokes have more hours of evolution when they arrive at the hospital because the symptoms of stroke in children can be confused with other diseases, such as epilepsy or migraines. Therefore, the diagnosis comes later”, explains the pediatric neurologist. Veronica Gonzalez.
Medication should be administered within four and a half hours after the patient’s first symptoms
To avoid this delay, experts advise families and primary care physicians to refer children to hospital as soon as they develop sudden paralysis or movement, vision, or speech disorder.
Before administering fibrinolytic treatment, the pediatric neurologist should perform a neurological exam of the patient to see what degree of affect he has, assess whether it is indicated in your case and establish the dose that should be administered. There is also a neuroimaging emergency to confirm the stroke diagnosis.
Treatments available for minors
Currently, the treatments that allow treating stroke and preventing its sequelae are the intravenous fibrinolytic treatment – the one that was administered to the 16-year-old boy – and intra-arterial thrombolysis, which consists of introducing a catheter into the artery to dissolve the clot. The latter can be used when the patient has been evolving for more hours (at most between 12 and 24 hours).
80% of pediatric patients have motor, language or neurocognitive sequelae
Unfortunately, when the disease is diagnosed in most pediatric cases, this deadline is passed and the children have already been harmed. For this reason, 80% of pediatric patients have motor, language or neurocognitive sequelae. In some cases, they also have epilepsy and brain damage-related behavior problems.
World Stroke Day
Today, October 29, is World Stroke Day, a disease that is the second leading cause of death in Spain and the first in women, according to the Spanish Society of Emergency and Emergency Medicine (SEMES)
This term is used to describe the consequences of sudden interruption of blood flow to a part of the brain (cerebral ischemia, 85% of cases) or rupture of a cerebral artery or vein (cerebral hemorrhage, 15% of cases). When blood does not arrive properly, the function of the affected part of the brain can be altered temporarily or permanently.
In Spain, stroke affects some 130,000 people, of which 30% die and 40% suffer some type of disability.
Source: Hospital Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona
Rights: Creative Commons.
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