Professor Behzad Eftekhar discussed stroke risk in Western Sydney compared to the Easter suburbs in the Sydney Morning Herald. Stroke patients in western Sydney are waiting three times longer than their eastern and northern counterparts to access a life-saving treatment, a study reveals, with Professor Behzad Eftekhar calling for the specialised service to be established at Nepean Hospital to “save lives and permanent disability”.
Time is critical – for every minute after a stroke that treatment is delayed, up to 1.9 million brain cells die. This means that every 15 minutes, the risk of brain death increases by five per cent, according to the Stroke Foundation.
The study done by Professor Eftekhar, which analysed access times and distances to endovascular clot retrieval (ECR) services, found stroke patients in the west had estimated average travel times of between 38 to 64 minutes to access clot retrieval service while this time for a typical patient in the eastern suburbs is on average 7 and for northern suburbs is about 12 minutes. If the service was available at Nepean, that could be cut to 17 minutes. Read more of the interview here
