KETTERING, Ohio (WDTN) – Kettering Health Network is using artificial intelligence that can reverse disability in patients with new stroke symptoms.
Stroke patients with a blood clot in the brain who don’t qualify for the tPA clot-busting medicine now have another option for treatment that can save their life and improve their quality of life.
One of those patients is Ronald Madden.
On January 9, Ronald Madden woke up unable to feel his left side.
Realizing he was having a stroke, he alerted his wife and was taken to Kettering Memorial Hospital, and initially, they thought he would not be able to use his left side again.
After using this new RAPID software, rehabilitation nurses quickly realized he would make a quick recovery.
“They were going to see what I needed, they had me get out of bed walk around with them, turn around, and they said you don’t need any at all,” said Madden.
RAPID software quickly and automatically analyzes CT scans of stroke patients to determine in minutes if the patient is a candidate for a thrombectomy, a procedure in which the surgeon removes a blood clot from an artery or vein.
Results are immediately sent to Kettering Health Network’s stroke team, who can view the results on a computer or smartphone.
Madden is just one of the hundreds of patients whose lives have been saved by this brand new artificial intelligence.
“Traditionally, what we’ve had to do is scan patients, it takes 15 minutes to really sort out the raw data to even get to the images, so you have the time it takes to get someone here to review the image and then the processing time,” said Dr. Jody Short, a neurointerventionalist with Kettering Health Network. “You’re looking at probably 30 to 45 minutes that we’ve saved.”
And those minutes matter.
Before this software, patients typically had a six hour window from the onset of the stroke to have a successful surgery.
Now this allows doctors to save brain tissue and reverse effects of strokes up to 24 hours after.
“It’s been a gamechanger if you will,” said Short.
“I’m driving, I do whatever I want, I don’t have no side effects whatsoever,” said Madden.
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