Latest Advances in Stroke Treatment

Latest Advances in Stroke Treatment


Latest Advances in Stroke Treatment

For anyone having a stroke, time is everything. Getting help quickly can make the difference between recovery and disability. You will take away an understanding of stroke risk factors and new stroke therapies from this discussion. Speaker: Jeremy Heit, MD

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Content

0 ->
7.064 -> My name's Jeremy Heit.
7.98 -> I'm currently one of the fellows in neuro-interventional
10.313 -> radiology, and I'll describe what that is in just a minute.
13.16 -> And I'll be staying on at Stanford as staff
15.43 -> next year, so I'll be around for hopefully quite a long time.
19.18 -> So a little bit of background about me.
21.46 -> I trained, actually, here at Stanford.
23.23 -> I did an MD and a PhD here at Stanford, ended in 2008.
26.83 -> And then I decided the weather was too nice.
28.73 -> I needed to harden myself up.
30.36 -> So I went to Boston.
31.72 -> I did an internship in internal medicine
33.96 -> at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.
35.77 -> And then I did my radiology residency
37.73 -> at Massachusetts General Hospital.
39.76 -> And then my wife was sick of shoveling all the snow
41.885 -> and decided, actually, the weather is better here,
43.75 -> so we came back here, and we've been here
45.458 -> for two more years while I've been doing my fellowship.
48.37 -> So it's good to be back in California.
50.2 -> And I want to talk to you about a topic that's
52.63 -> very important for our field.
54.53 -> And by way of introduction to neuro-interventional radiology,
58.53 -> it sounds like a mouthful.
60 -> My wife still doesn't think I have a real job,
62.31 -> because it sounds futuristic.
63.81 -> And it kind of is.
65.099 -> But basically, what it is as we are
66.76 -> the specialists of the blood vessels of the brain and spine.
70.07 -> And most of what we do is minimally
71.96 -> invasive surgery in the brain through inside
74.74 -> of blood vessels.
75.87 -> And I'll show you how that pertains to stroke as we
78.62 -> talk about stroke later today.
81.98 -> So I have no financial conflicts of interest.
84.31 -> I'm a fellow.
85.71 -> So I don't have any money, either.
87.69 -> [LAUGHTER]
88.896 -> So what we'll talk about tonight,
90.27 -> a little bit of background about what an ischemic stroke is.
94.11 -> I'll talk about what it is, what causes it, and a little bit
97.29 -> about the biology of how we think about stroke,
99.47 -> in terms of treating it.
100.592 -> And then I want to spend a little bit of time talking
102.8 -> about how we image stroke.
104.4 -> That's become a very important topic,
106.23 -> and very important in how we decide
107.94 -> who we can take for a procedure that we perform
110.87 -> as neuro-interventionalists.
112.51 -> Talk about what those procedures are currently.
114.61 -> It's a very exciting time to be a neuro-interventionalist.
117.026 -> And then talk about, and speculate a little bit about,
119.43 -> what the future might hold for endovascular stroke treatment.
123.52 -> So let's start off by talking about what is ischemic stroke?
126.45 -> Well, this is a picture many of you may have seen before.
128.924 -> It's very popular and put out by the American Heart Association.
131.59 -> And I like it because it's a very nice summary
133.506 -> of what a patient having a stroke might look like.
135.91 -> This is a gentleman who's trying to smile.
138.08 -> And what you can see is that his smiles asymmetric.
141.34 -> This side looks normal.
142.47 -> He's got a good grin.
143.57 -> His cheek is coming up.
144.87 -> But this side, he has a droop.
146.91 -> This cheek is not moving upward.
148.85 -> His eye's a little bit droopy.
150.75 -> And moreover, if this were a very dramatic stroke,
152.97 -> you would find that he has profound weakness
155.06 -> in his right arm, his right leg.
157.34 -> His sensation on the right side of his body may be affected.
160.47 -> These are very profound neurologic symptoms.
162.94 -> And just to keep you straight in going forward,
165.27 -> we think about stroke in opposites.
167.17 -> So this patient, where all the symptoms
169.01 -> are on the right side of his body,
170.55 -> has a problem on the left side of his brain.
173.97 -> Now, patients with these symptoms
175.92 -> can be very severe like that or less severe.
178.21 -> But overall in this country, stroke, every year,
180.62 -> affects 800,000 people.
182.27 -> So it's a very big problem for our medical system.
185.29 -> 140,000 of those people will die.
187.84 -> That's a very high mortality rate.
189.454 -> And it is the leading cause of disability in this country,
191.87 -> so it's a big financial impact to our health care system,
194.39 -> as well.
195.23 -> Expenditures that the US spends treating and caring
198.3 -> for patients with stroke exceed $73 billion a year.
201.75 -> So it's a big problem.
203.75 -> So those are the symptoms that you might see.
206.05 -> There are other variations of that,
207.75 -> but that's sort of a good overall picture.
209.5 -> But what causes that?
210.65 -> Well, a good way to think about stroke
213.132 -> is an analogy to something most of you
214.715 -> are probably familiar with, which is a heart attack.
216.985 -> When you have a heart attack, you
218.36 -> block an artery going to the heart.
220.23 -> Well, similarly, when you have a stroke,
222.51 -> it's a problem with giving blood flow to the brain.
224.839 -> And we think about it as something
226.255 -> that happens very rapidly, and it's usually
228.046 -> a blood clot that blocks a major blood vessel in the brain
231.9 -> or on the way up to the brain.
233.62 -> And this is a nice schematic from a recent review
235.68 -> in the literature.
236.59 -> And what you see here is there are blood vessels in our neck
239.09 -> that run up toward the brain.
240.36 -> This is the internal carotid artery.
242.47 -> And then they turn, they have a very torturous course,
244.97 -> and then this right here represents a small blood
247.13 -> clot blocking a major artery in the brain called
249.51 -> the middle cerebral artery, or MCA.
251.94 -> The MCA provides blood flow to around 80%
254.91 -> of the cerebral hemispheres, and most large strokes
258.209 -> affect this blood vessel.
260.11 -> So in the patient I just showed you,
262.04 -> he would have a blockage in the left middle cerebral artery,
264.719 -> which would account for his symptoms,
266.26 -> including the right-sided weakness,
268.3 -> right-sided facial droop.
271.35 -> So now I want to jump forward to thinking
273.89 -> about-- we see what the blood vessel looks like,
276.01 -> but what's going on in this patient's head?
278.32 -> And I've made some images to try to schematize what this is.
281.03 -> So these are images just from an MRI,
282.71 -> but I've kind of color-coded them
284.299 -> to help us think about, conceptually,
285.84 -> what's going on in the brain.
287.422 -> Normally we're all sitting here with good blood
289.38 -> flow to our brains.
290.28 -> If you interrupt that blood flow,
292.34 -> the effects are very immediate.
294.05 -> You can think of a stroke as an immediate symptom.
296.75 -> You're doing fine.
297.55 -> Suddenly, you're very weak.
298.76 -> It happens like that.
300.47 -> And there's kind of two things that can happen to the brain
302.99 -> when you don't get enough blood flow.
304.89 -> One is that the tissue can die very rapidly.
308 -> Neurons do not tolerate the lack of blood flow for very long.
312.02 -> And if that happens, you get dead tissue.
314.98 -> But not everything that's downstream of the blocked
318.18 -> artery dies right away.
319.489 -> Kind of like if you're driving on a highway
321.28 -> and there's an accident, if you have the right app,
323.48 -> you can get off and kind of go around the back streets
325.37 -> and get back on the highway and keep going.
327.31 -> The brain has a way to reroute blood
329 -> to areas that aren't getting enough blood flow.
331.03 -> But if that route takes too long,
333.22 -> it's not enough to keep the tissue alive.
335.47 -> But you have another whole area of tissue
337.53 -> that's at risk of going on to die
339.87 -> if something's not done to restore
341.41 -> blood flow to the brain.
343.07 -> And in the medical literature, we've
345.3 -> termed these two areas core and penumbra.
348.07 -> Core refers to the core infarction
350.28 -> that happens in a stroke.
351.87 -> That's dead tissue.
353.22 -> We think of it as irreversibly damaged.
355.32 -> It doesn't get better.
356.26 -> It doesn't come back.
357.92 -> By contrast, the penumbra refers to the tissue
361.25 -> that's at risk of injury, but it's not dead yet.
364.58 -> It's not functioning normally.
366.55 -> If we can restore the blood flow to the brain,
369.13 -> we think we can save the penumbra.
372.45 -> We spend a lot of time and appropriate energy
375.93 -> in imaging these two areas, because it
377.85 -> makes tremendous impact, as I'll tell you later,
380.93 -> in how we can treat patients with stroke.
383.102 -> So at Stanford, we've been a leader
384.56 -> in some of the advanced imaging that images core and penumbra,
387.85 -> and here's one example from a recent patient.
389.99 -> This is a patient who's coming in with a stroke.
392.41 -> This is an MRI sequence called the diffusion-weighted
394.85 -> sequence, and what this assesses is the movement of water.
397.67 -> And when brain tissue dies, water doesn't move,
400.13 -> and you can take a picture of that.
401.67 -> And right here in the brain, this is a stroke.
404.6 -> It's a relatively small stroke.
406.639 -> And now in this same patient, we have a way
408.43 -> to quantitatively assess the blood flow up to the brain
411.93 -> by injecting a label that you can see by MRI.
414.68 -> And you can see that although the patient has
416.97 -> a relatively small stroke of core infarction that's there,
420.74 -> there's a large amount of territory that's
423.17 -> not getting enough blood flow, and likely functioning poorly,
426.397 -> which is the patient's penumbra.
427.73 ->
430.417 -> So let's go back to an image that looks like this.
432.5 -> This is the patient that's having a stroke.
434.97 -> And we can see that let's say this part is core.
438.25 -> It's infarcted.
438.96 -> We're not going to get that amount of tissue back.
441.29 -> However, this part of the brain might leave the patients
444.45 -> with relatively less profound symptoms.
448.01 -> However, there's also this area of penumbra
450.49 -> that, if that is not saved, results in much worse symptoms.
454.97 -> If we're able to reperfuse the brain,
457.29 -> meaning restore the blood flow, then everything that's blue
461.28 -> is saved.
461.84 -> It goes back to normal.
463.37 -> And we're left with the same size of core infarction
466.19 -> that the patient came in with.
467.44 -> That's what we want to do as physicians, because that's
469.797 -> giving the patient the best chance at having
471.63 -> a good outcome.
473.45 -> By contrast, if we aren't able to open the blood vessel that's
476.71 -> blocked going to the brain, and there's no reperfusion,
479.98 -> the tissue that is the penumbra will eventually
482.78 -> go on and infarct, and you'll have a larger core infarction.
486.79 -> And as the amount of brain tissue
488.46 -> that dies increases in size, so do the consequences.
493.01 -> So in thinking about that, I think
494.92 -> you can probably understand that reperfusion is really
498.06 -> the goal of all stroke therapy.
499.96 -> We work very rapidly through both medical treatments
502.98 -> and endovascular treatments that I'll describe in a bit
505.31 -> to get the blood vessel open, in order
507 -> to minimize the amount of injury that a brain sustains.
510.586 -> Let me show you a few examples, just
512.085 -> to illustrate these points.
513.419 -> This is from a patient that I took care of,
515.21 -> a 69-year-old woman who was out with some friends
518.49 -> when she very suddenly develop weakness in her left arm
521.559 -> and a droop in her left face.
523.88 -> She came right into Stanford.
525.2 -> She was brought by her friend.
526.45 -> She had a head CT scan that really looked very normal.
529.25 -> There is no evidence of a large infarction here.
531.98 -> There's no evidence of overt injury.
534.41 -> She got perfusion imaging to assess what the penumbra is,
537.31 -> and you can see she has a very large amount of tissue that
540.985 -> is at risk of infarction.
543.4 -> We also were able to image the blood vessels non-invasively.
546.58 -> This is a CT angiogram.
548.61 -> And what you can see is the normal side of the brain,
551.04 -> this is the middle cerebral artery, in white.
553.93 -> And if you look on the other side, it starts off fine,
556.63 -> but there's a hole right there.
558.9 -> That's a blood clot.
560.53 -> So that's the blood clot that's partially blocking this artery,
564.21 -> and the patient does not have very many blood vessels going
566.95 -> to this part of the brain.
568.48 -> Without blood flow in that part of the brain,
570.41 -> she has this large penumbra.
572.29 -> So this is a patient you can help,
573.92 -> because she's not had a big stroke here yet,
576.07 -> of core infarction.
577.22 -> But if we don't get that blood vessel open, she's in trouble.
580.72 -> So she was given a medication called tPA,
583.01 -> which is tissue Plasminogen Activator.
584.96 -> It's a clot-busting medication.
586.97 -> And literally in front of your eyes,
588.7 -> she started moving the left arm.
590.97 -> She regained her strength quite dramatically.
593.56 -> She then got an MRI scan around an hour later.
596.35 -> And an MRI is better at showing where the actual core
599.51 -> infarction is, and she had a very small core infarction.
601.87 -> This is less than a milliliter in volume.
603.89 -> It's very tiny.
605.64 -> Her perfusion had normalized, except in the area immediately
608.37 -> around the stroke, which we expect to see.
610.76 -> And her blood vessel is now open.
613.44 -> The medication worked, and she made a great outcome.
617.61 -> Here's another patient I took care of,
619.62 -> a 68-year-old gentleman who came in with right-sided weakness
623.23 -> and had a very small stroke on an MRI scan.
625.44 -> You can barely even see it, it's happening so quickly.
628.64 -> This is a patient that we took for endovascular stroke
631.02 -> therapy, and we were able to find the blocked
633.34 -> artery in the brain.
634.54 -> And I'll describe this later, but this is an angiogram where
637.039 -> we've injected a black dye.
639.31 -> Looks black by x-ray.
640.89 -> And what we see is that there's nothing here
643.34 -> where there should be a lot of blood vessels.
645.44 -> This is where the middle cerebral artery should be,
647.73 -> and the arrow denotes the blockage.
650.18 -> We were able to get the blood clot out, restore
652.95 -> all this blood flow, and the patient
654.82 -> was left with basically the same size
656.91 -> stroke that he came in with.
658.78 -> Again, that's what you want to do.
660.425 -> Get the blood flow to the brain back, minimize the damage
663.28 -> so it doesn't get bigger.
664.61 -> This gentleman also made an excellent recovery.
667.85 -> Here's a different patient.
669.22 -> This is a little bit bigger core infarction on an MRI,
672.55 -> but you can see it's still not that big, relative to the size
675.64 -> of the brain.
676.789 -> This was another patient that was brought to our endovascular
679.33 -> suite for endovascular stroke therapy.
682.124 -> And this was done before I arrived here,
683.79 -> when some of the technology was older.
685.86 -> And again, you can see, not a lot of blood vessels here
688.469 -> where the middle cerebral artery should be.
690.26 -> And there's a blockage.
691.29 -> This just stops.
692.28 -> It should go like that.
693.88 -> So the doctors worked their best.
696.024 -> They worked very hard.
696.94 -> They could not get this open, despite everything
698.94 -> that they did.
699.93 -> And the consequences of that for this patient
701.92 -> was that the patient went on to have
703.67 -> a much larger stroke and a much worse clinical outcome.
707.16 -> So those are three examples of why
708.875 -> you want to have the blood vessel open, because it really
711.25 -> does maximize the chance of having
712.79 -> a good recovery from a stroke.
715.45 -> So in going forward, keep in mind
717.182 -> that what we're going to be talking about
718.89 -> are ways to reperfuse the brain.
721 -> Get the blood vessel open, restore the blood flow,
723.81 -> minimize the size of the stroke.
725.517 -> And again, I've been speaking a lot about we
727.35 -> want to do this quickly.
728.88 -> This is a widely cited paper in our literature from Dr. saver
732.265 -> at UCLA, where he calculated, well,
734.9 -> how much injury do you get in the brain
737.23 -> on a per-minute basis, on a per-stroke basis?
739.97 -> And a widely quoted number is this one.
742.48 -> Per minute, if you don't restore blood flow,
744.85 -> you lose around two million neurons.
748.08 -> That's a lot.
749.41 -> So you really want to get that blood vessel open.
751.82 -> And I was alarmed to see that one stroke accelerates
754.37 -> your aging by around 36 years.
756.77 -> So these are a little bit of extrapolation,
759.91 -> because he's doing this on just some rough math.
762 -> But the point is that you want to get blood vessel open,
765.74 -> because there are real effects to not doing so, in terms
768.47 -> of how a patient will do.
770.63 -> OK, so what can we do to help patients with a stroke?
774 -> Well, we have a few options.
776.15 -> In 1995, there was a very large study
778.98 -> published in the New England Journal of Medicine
781.01 -> showing that intravenous administration
783.28 -> of the clot-busting medication tPA
785.51 -> was very effective in taking care of patients with stroke.
788.89 -> OK, tPA, again, stands for tissue Plasminogen Activator.
792.1 -> It's injected through an IV, and it acts to find a blood clot
795 -> and actively dissolve it.
796.73 -> So patients that got this drug, compared
798.92 -> to a control group of patients that were just
800.85 -> managed medically, 30% of the patients who got the drug
803.92 -> had a favorable outcome and were functionally independent.
807.26 -> That's very good data.
808.19 -> And this was just a landslide, in terms of stroke therapy.
811.22 -> It was a real game-changer at the time.
813.22 -> Because prior to that, all you could
815.04 -> do were sort of measures to try to increase the blood pressure,
817.977 -> make sure you try to get more blood flow that way.
820.06 -> But you weren't really doing anything
821.601 -> to actively get rid of the blood clot.
824.15 -> Now, the downside of tPA is that the data
827.61 -> shows there's a very limited time window
829.45 -> in which this is helpful.
831.25 -> The original trial said you need to give the medication
833.92 -> within three hours.
835.65 -> And follow-up studies have said you
837.18 -> need to get it into the patient within four and a half hours.
840.55 -> Many patients with strokes do not get to the hospital in time
844.25 -> to get treated with tPA.
845.9 -> In fact, it's only around 7% to 10%
848.04 -> of patients now that are even eligible for tPA.
850.74 -> These are very small numbers in the context
852.64 -> of what I showed you demographically
854.55 -> goes on in the country earlier.
856.51 -> So that's a problem.
858.33 -> That being said, if you can get to the hospital,
860.33 -> it's a good thing.
861.73 -> So subsequent to that, in 1999, there
864.73 -> was another trial called the PROACT II trial, from Japan.
867.22 -> And this trial showed that there's another option.
870.73 -> If you're able to get a catheter, which is just
873.2 -> a hollow plastic tube, from inside the arteries
876.076 -> all the way up into the arteries in the brain
877.95 -> where the blood clot is, and then directly deliver
880.15 -> a similar clot-busting medication,
882.63 -> you can make an improvement in how the patients will do.
885.33 -> And importantly, they extended the time window to six hours.
889.22 -> So this actually increases the number of patients
891.35 -> that you can offer a treatment to pretty significantly.
894.77 -> That being said, these early studies
896.46 -> were also plagued with high rates of complications.
899.82 -> A lot of these patients developed
901.25 -> bleeding in the brain, and that was a significant concern,
904.13 -> in terms of how you care for people.
906.05 -> And it is something that's still limited the use of this therapy
909.38 -> broadly.
911.355 -> Now, more recently, there's been a technique called
913.48 -> mechanical thrombectomy, and this
916.04 -> is a technique that's also an endovascular therapy
918.425 -> from inside blood vessels.
919.81 -> And the goal of this is to mechanically remove the clot.
923.55 -> And you can do that by either putting a device up
926.04 -> to grab the clot and pull it out,
928.34 -> putting a device up to grab the clot
930.02 -> and suck it out like a vacuum.
932.01 -> But these newer devices have actually
934.51 -> begun to be a game-changer, which I'll
936.42 -> talk about more in a minute.
937.84 -> And more importantly, the recent trials
940.29 -> have extended the window in which these devices can be used
942.96 -> from six hours to eight hours.
945.08 -> And many people, including even us,
946.75 -> are taking this beyond eight hours
948.54 -> now and getting very good results.
951.59 -> So we're moving in the right direction,
953.97 -> in terms of being able to fight this clock
956.08 -> and being able to help people.
957.78 -> But we've got to know who will really benefit from what we do,
961.29 -> and that's where imaging has played a big role.
963.73 -> And one of the things we're likely see going forward
966.02 -> is that imaging could be a way to stop the clock.
968.71 -> Wouldn't it be nice if a patient woke up
970.87 -> with a stroke-- we have no idea what time it started.
973.975 -> Maybe it happened five minutes before they woke up.
976.1 -> Maybe it happened two hours after they went to bed,
979.22 -> and it's done.
980.37 -> But what if you had a way to sort that out and say,
982.917 -> you know what?
983.5 -> They're eligible for treatment.
984.791 -> Well, people are working on ways to use advanced imaging,
987.3 -> particularly at places like Stanford,
989.13 -> to say, this is a patient who still can be helped,
991.8 -> even though we don't know when the stroke started.
993.89 -> And I expect that this will be an exciting area
995.848 -> to watch in the years to come.
998.03 -> OK, so how do we use imaging to kind of fight this clock
1001.74 -> and decide who is a good patient to take to the cath lab that
1005.13 -> will benefit from our therapy?
1006.644 -> Well, again, remember, what we're trying to do
1008.56 -> is reperfuse the brain and minimize the amount of injury.
1012.17 -> And in thinking about who is a good patient
1014.49 -> to put through a procedure to try to reperfuse the brain,
1017.54 -> there are three criteria.
1019.39 -> You want to have a patient with a relatively small core,
1022.92 -> a small amount of infarction.
1025.26 -> This patient should also have a large amount
1028.069 -> of tissue at risk of infarction if we are not
1030.48 -> successful in getting the blood vessel open.
1033.069 -> It's that mismatch that's really critical.
1035.73 -> And lastly, there's got to be a blood clot that we can get to.
1038.374 -> There's a big difference in a blood clot
1040.04 -> that's at the base of the skull, where the arteries are just
1042.67 -> coming into the brain, in terms of being able to access it,
1045.39 -> to something that's the way up near the top of the brain.
1047.839 -> The technical difficulties of getting
1050.07 -> further out, and practicality, is very different.
1054.501 -> So we've got to have a way to answer these three
1056.5 -> questions for every patient that we're
1058.11 -> going to consider taking to the cath lab for a procedure.
1061.18 -> And at Stanford, we are very good at doing this
1063.53 -> with two different ways of advanced imaging.
1065.58 -> We can use MRI and we can use CT,
1067.54 -> and there are reasons for each that I'm happy to talk about
1070.28 -> with you guys later.
1071.35 -> But both of these can basically get at the same points.
1073.89 -> An MRI is very good at finding how big is
1076.19 -> the area of infarction?
1078.12 -> It's very good at finding how big is the penumbra?
1080.54 -> Again, by injecting a dye that changes how the MRI senses it,
1084.51 -> and you can quantitatively assess blood flow
1086.37 -> to each side of the brain.
1087.7 -> And it's very good at finding whether there's
1089.62 -> a vessel that's missing.
1091.29 -> Similarly, CT is very good at finding
1095.15 -> early signs of a stroke.
1096.38 -> Not as good as MRI, but good enough.
1098.76 -> It's equally good at perfusion, in terms of assessing
1101.59 -> the size of the penumbra.
1103.21 -> And it's excellent at finding a cut-off
1105.57 -> in a vessel that represents the location of the blood clot.
1109.1 -> So any patient that's going to be considered for stroke
1111.49 -> therapy, by and large, should have these three questions
1114.43 -> answered by CT or MRI scan.
1116.2 -> And that's really becoming the standard of care nationally.
1119.82 -> OK, so now we know how to pick the patients
1122.21 -> that we think we can help.
1123.84 -> We know that we can get them up and do something about it.
1126.84 -> So what exactly can we do?
1128.83 -> Well, endovascular stroke therapy is very, very exciting
1131.99 -> right now.
1132.92 -> And that's because in the last five months--
1135.68 -> almost five months.
1136.61 -> It's almost May-- there have now been five randomized control
1139.66 -> trials, all published in the New England Journal of Medicine,
1142.49 -> showing a remarkable benefit to endovascular stroke therapy,
1146.04 -> compared to medical management alone.
1148.8 -> So I want to put one data slide up.
1151.31 -> So I apologize if it's too much, but I
1153.03 -> think this is a really nice way to illustrate this.
1155.58 -> This slide's inspired by Dr. Albers, one of our stroke
1157.975 -> neurologists, who gave an excellent talk about this
1160.1 -> recently.
1161.04 -> And what you're looking at here, on the y-axis,
1163.65 -> this is the percentage of patients with a good outcome
1166.96 -> after a stroke.
1168.26 -> The medical literature, we usually define
1169.98 -> a good outcome as someone who is functionally independent
1173.14 -> and with minimal symptoms.
1174.94 -> Because that's a patient that overall
1177.06 -> still has a very good quality of life,
1179 -> and maybe even a normal quality of life,
1181.37 -> and is also someone who is not stuck needing assistance,
1186.61 -> and so on and so forth.
1187.64 -> So obviously, that's what you want to be.
1189.08 -> Someone who still has a very good quality of life.
1191.27 -> And then on the x-axis here, these
1193.91 -> are the names of the five trials.
1195.51 -> You can see they give them kind of goofy names.
1197.51 -> And in each trial, there's both a medical arm
1200.53 -> and there's an endovascular arm.
1202.63 -> All the patients that got endovascular therapy
1205.38 -> got equal medical therapy.
1206.77 -> So this is added benefit to what we normally do for patients.
1210.25 -> And you can see, if you look at the patients who
1212.45 -> underwent endovascular stroke therapy, it's really remarkable
1216.67 -> how much better they can do, if you
1218.55 -> select the patients properly by the criteria
1221.54 -> I discussed earlier.
1223.08 -> 33% good outcome to 19%-- this was
1225.33 -> the first study that came out.
1227.64 -> 53% of patients treated have a good outcome compared to 30%.
1232.25 -> 44%, 60%, 71%.
1234.17 -> These are excellent, excellent numbers.
1236.34 -> And this makes a big, big difference
1237.98 -> for each one of these patients.
1239.66 -> And even on a bigger scale, it's a massive difference
1242.51 -> to our society, both in how people are doing,
1245.03 -> how their health is, the financial impact of stroke.
1248.55 -> These are steps in the right direction.
1250.99 -> So again, what is happening to patients
1252.97 -> that are in this red group that were brought for a procedure?
1256.01 -> Well, as I discussed earlier, there's three options.
1258.74 -> We can give tPA, that clot-busting medication,
1262.41 -> directly into the clot to break it apart.
1265.51 -> We can put a big catheter up to the clot
1267.59 -> and try to suck it out.
1269.105 -> Or we can use a device that looks like this.
1271.92 -> This has been termed a stentriever.
1273.93 -> These were initially developed as stents for narrowing
1276.524 -> in the blood vessels, and they weren't very good for that.
1278.94 -> But what we found by accident in testing
1280.68 -> them is that they're very good at grabbing blood clots
1282.93 -> and pulling them back out.
1284.092 -> So as long as you can leave the stent attached to something
1286.55 -> you can pull, you can use it to get a blood clot out
1288.956 -> of a vessel.
1290.42 -> So all these things I'm talking about now
1292.81 -> require things to be inside an artery that's way up here
1296.17 -> in your brain.
1297.31 -> But how do you get it up there?
1298.785 -> Well, everything we do has to have
1301.16 -> a little bit of road-mapping and driving on the highway.
1305.01 -> Basically, we put our equipment into an artery in the leg.
1307.91 -> Again, these are largely catheters,
1309.92 -> which are just long, hollow plastic tubes.
1312.13 -> And then we use x-rays to navigate them
1314.03 -> from an artery in the leg, all the way backwards
1316.029 -> into the neck, up into the arteries in the brain.
1319.19 -> So it's a pretty big distance.
1320.44 -> I'm a short guy, but you can imagine a taller person--
1322.73 -> that's a long way to go.
1324.21 -> And it's really a testament to material science
1326.78 -> that we're able to do this.
1328.55 -> When I first got interested in this field,
1330.84 -> these procedures were not only extremely difficult,
1333.08 -> and in many cases not possible, they took hours to do.
1337.11 -> These procedures now can be done in 20 minutes.
1340.2 -> They can be very, very fast.
1341.48 -> So there's been a remarkable advancement
1343.29 -> in catheter technology biomaterials,
1345.84 -> such that you can have a wire in your hand,
1348.45 -> and by turning it a little bit, you
1349.97 -> can manipulate a device that's all the way up in the brain.
1352.53 -> That's really an amazing feat.
1354.23 -> And it's really made a big difference for patients.
1356.74 -> So what does this look like?
1358 -> Well, here's a patient that we took care of,
1360.15 -> and I thought it would be interesting to show you
1361.39 -> guys how we get a device up there,
1362.83 -> and sort of the curly-course-Q that's required.
1366.01 -> So this is a short movie.
1367.59 -> This is a catheter here that's all the way up
1369.64 -> in the internal carotid artery in the skull.
1372 -> And then there's a smaller catheter
1373.67 -> call a microcatheter that's been put through this,
1376.25 -> that winds its way up into the artery in the brain right here.
1378.87 -> Here's the tip of the microcatheter.
1380.83 -> The blood clot that we're going after is right here.
1383.76 -> So if you watch, you can see, this is the device.
1387.3 -> This is the stentriever getting pushed up.
1390.78 -> And it goes through the microcatheter.
1392.44 -> Look at the turns this thing has to make to get all the way out,
1395.38 -> up into the brain.
1396.84 -> Again, that's really remarkable.
1398.24 -> It's navigating 180-degree turns, 360-degree turns,
1402.47 -> by pushing something down in the leg.
1404.89 -> And once we get the device all the way up
1406.6 -> there, we can basically unsheathe it, expose the stent,
1409.48 -> and then we're able to grip the clot.
1412.89 -> After we do that, you can pull the clot out.
1415.8 -> This is the same patient.
1416.937 -> I'm going to warn you, this is a patient who was awake--
1419.27 -> which we do on purpose.
1420.228 -> I'm happy to talk about that later-- and very confused.
1422.984 -> So you're going to see the head moving around a lot.
1425.15 -> He was very comfortable.
1426.18 -> We don't let our patients hurt.
1427.52 -> But it's going to look funny.
1428.92 -> This is what happens when we start
1430.54 -> to pull the blood clot out.
1432.57 -> So first thing we do is we're moving this big sucking
1435.54 -> catheter up along this stentriever right here.
1439.194 -> And you can see the patient's kind
1440.61 -> of chit-chatting away, moving around, very confused.
1443.057 -> And now you're going to see that we're
1444.64 -> going to start to pull the stentriever
1446.223 -> device into the catheter.
1450.967 -> Here it comes.
1451.55 -> We're moving along, moving along, and almost there.
1455.51 -> Pop-- we got it out.
1457.64 -> Blood clot's gone.
1458.99 -> Patient's doing OK.
1460.78 -> So that's sort of what this looks like.
1462.42 -> And you can kind of appreciate the difficulty of doing it,
1465.14 -> but also the fact we can do it.
1467.54 -> And it's really, I think, quite remarkable.
1469.56 -> All right, so I want to show you a few success stories.
1471.977 -> These are all patients that I've taken
1473.56 -> care of during my fellowship.
1475.29 -> This first one is a 63-year-old surfer girl.
1478.1 -> You heard both the age and the description correctly.
1480.892 -> She was actually running at the gym on the treadmill, which
1483.35 -> she still does every day-- extremely active, very fit--
1486.27 -> when she collapsed.
1487.84 -> She was brought to an outside hospital.
1489.91 -> They thought she was having a stroke.
1491.87 -> They gave her tPA to try to break up the blood clot,
1494.82 -> and they asked us if there was anything else we can do.
1497.58 -> She was put on a helicopter, flown to Stanford,
1499.577 -> and as soon as she landed on the roof,
1501.16 -> she came right down to an MRI scanner,
1503 -> where our whole team was waiting, and she had the scan.
1506.28 -> Her diffusion-weighted imaging shows
1507.99 -> she has a very, very small core infarction.
1510.615 -> It's tiny.
1511.659 -> Could barely even see it.
1512.7 -> You might even miss it.
1514.06 -> There's an arrow to help.
1515.79 -> But look at her perfusion.
1517.51 -> Her penumbra is unbelievably large.
1520.31 -> This is her dominant hemisphere.
1521.73 -> It's actually on the left side.
1523.31 -> These are as if you're looking at the feet of the patient.
1525.86 -> But this is a remarkable penumbra.
1528.85 -> This is a great patient that you can take to the cath lab
1531.39 -> and really help.
1532.79 -> And we know where the blood clot is.
1534.72 -> Here's the normal side.
1535.79 -> Look at all these blood vessels.
1537.123 -> This is the middle cerebral artery,
1538.76 -> and look at the lack of them on this side.
1541.17 -> And this is actually the blood clot itself.
1543.59 -> You can see the blood clot using a different MRI sequence.
1547.11 -> So we've got a patient with a small existing stroke,
1550.18 -> a lot of tissue at risk, and a blood clot that we can get to.
1553.93 -> We go straight to the cath lab.
1556.64 -> So here we are, first picture we've taken.
1558.391 -> The catheter is now in the artery in the neck.
1560.306 -> We've injected the contrast dye, which is black.
1562.4 -> It winds its way up, and boom, stops.
1565.58 -> This is where the blood clot is.
1566.914 -> There should be blood vessels all the way up here,
1568.996 -> and there are not.
1569.8 -> So we know that we've got to get to there.
1572.17 -> We go further up into the arteries in the brain.
1574.58 -> We've got an aspiration catheter here.
1577.25 -> We've got a stentriever across the area of the blood clot.
1581.13 -> We suck, we pull, and we're able to open up the blood vessel.
1586.93 -> This is a great result.
1589.004 -> Here's the blood clot.
1589.92 ->
1592.96 -> This patient did great.
1594.91 -> She was in the hospital for two days, went home.
1597.3 -> She's still running every day.
1599.047 -> This is a different patient we took care of.
1600.88 -> This is a triathlete.
1601.95 -> Not all strokes happen in patients
1603.77 -> who are in their 60s or older.
1605.23 -> He's 50.
1605.87 -> He was training for a triathlon, running, when he collapsed.
1609.4 -> Again, was brought to an outside hospital.
1611.2 -> Was again given tPA.
1612.32 -> He got to the hospital quickly.
1614.34 -> Same thing-- we were called.
1615.514 -> Put him on a helicopter, flew him to Stanford,
1617.43 -> and he went straight to the MRI scan.
1619.52 -> This patient's also had a relatively small stroke.
1621.987 -> Bigger than the last one I showed you,
1623.57 -> but this is still quite small.
1625.4 -> Has a large amount of brain tissue
1626.99 -> at risk of infarcting further if we don't
1629.16 -> get the blood vessel open.
1630.66 -> And again, like the last patient, the normal side.
1633.195 -> You can see the middle cerebral artery,
1634.82 -> and look-- there's a complete absence
1637.029 -> of the middle cerebral artery on this side.
1638.82 ->
1642.01 -> He comes straight up to the cath lab.
1644.32 -> This is an image that was taken 40 minutes after arriving
1647.87 -> at Stanford, 20 minutes of which were the MRI scan.
1651.33 -> So pretty quick.
1652.451 -> And what you can see is a little bit
1653.95 -> of a different picture than what I showed you last time,
1655.66 -> and let me kind of show you what's going on.
1657.88 -> This is looking at the side of the head.
1659.664 -> This other picture here is looking
1661.08 -> at the front of the head.
1662.49 -> All of the contrast dye we've injected is coming up
1665.22 -> and instead of going out to this part of the brain,
1667.4 -> it's actually shooting backwards and going
1669.149 -> to these blood vessels in the back of the brain.
1671.81 -> And that's because there's a blood clot right here,
1674.52 -> where all of the blood vessels that are right
1676.47 -> here are not filling.
1677.7 -> This is a very bad stroke to have.
1679.72 -> This is a blood clot you want to get out.
1681.98 -> Here's another image, kind outlining
1683.57 -> the length of this blood clot.
1685.97 -> This was almost 2 centimeters long.
1689.36 -> So we were able to go across it with our equipment,
1693.67 -> grab it, pull it out, and look at the difference.
1697.21 -> Restored the blood flow.
1698.4 -> This was one pull.
1699.63 -> This whole procedure took 32 minutes.
1702.684 -> Here's the blood clot.
1703.6 ->
1706.39 -> So look what happened after that.
1707.99 -> This is how he started.
1709.98 -> His stroke got a little bit bigger, but not too much.
1712.24 -> There are a little bit of small areas
1713.781 -> of bleeding in here, which is something that can happen.
1716.46 -> Here's what the perfusion looked like, completely normal
1719.79 -> after we opened up the blood vessel.
1722.04 -> And here's what his blood vessels
1723.91 -> looked like on the MRI scan.
1725.27 -> Again, there was nothing here, and now it's normal.
1728.752 -> And I had to put this one in.
1729.96 -> This is just a great picture.
1731.168 -> This is a reconstructed image of the blood vessels from his MRI
1734.78 -> when he came in.
1735.98 -> And again, here's the blood clot right here.
1738.53 -> And there it is now.
1741.51 -> He also did very well.
1743.96 -> One more example.
1745.28 -> This is a 64-year-old gentleman who came in.
1748.27 -> Kind of subtle symptoms-- nausea, some kind
1750.96 -> of funny vision changes.
1752.7 -> And I show this case to kind of hearken
1755.31 -> back to earlier, in that why don't all patients get
1757.94 -> to the hospital quickly?
1759.59 -> Sometimes you don't know you're having a stroke.
1761.99 -> I mean, these are symptoms you've all probably
1763.906 -> had-- blurry vision.
1764.94 -> My wife called me today.
1765.97 -> She said her eyes were a little blurry.
1767.595 -> She has bad allergies.
1769.39 -> Sometimes you don't feel well.
1770.67 -> But you could be missing something that's a big problem.
1773.45 -> And that amount of confusion is to be completely expected,
1776.44 -> and it's going to limit some people getting to the hospital.
1779.12 -> This patient did get to the hospital,
1781.34 -> because the nausea was quite bad.
1783 -> And there's a very, very small stroke
1785.081 -> in the back part of the brain.
1786.33 -> This is the pons.
1787.19 -> This is a very important part of your brain.
1789.264 -> This is the part of the brain that
1790.68 -> controls your level of arousal, consciousness, basic functions
1794.49 -> of breathing and being alive.
1797.132 -> And this patient, different to what I've showed you before,
1799.59 -> has a blockage in an artery in the back of the brain.
1802.37 -> This is the basilar artery, arguably
1804.406 -> the most important artery in your body.
1806.03 -> And there's a blood clot right at the top of it
1808.48 -> that's blocking part of the posterior cerebral artery,
1811.08 -> which goes toward the back of the brain.
1812.9 ->
1815.41 -> This patient was brought right up to the cath lab,
1817.692 -> and here's the picture.
1818.65 -> You kind of see this little fuzzy interface here?
1821.28 -> That's the contrast flowing around the clot
1823.72 -> into the normal side here.
1825.52 -> But there should be something that
1827.02 -> looks like this on this side, and there's not.
1829.53 -> So the blood clot is blocking the top
1831.25 -> of this artery and the artery that goes to-- in this case,
1834.037 -> it's the right side.
1834.87 -> It's opposite.
1836.96 -> So we were able to get the blood clot out, open the patient up.
1840.9 -> Here's the blood clot.
1842.14 -> And again, the patient did very, very well.
1843.99 ->
1846.702 -> OK.
1847.61 -> So those are some examples of what we can do now.
1849.994 -> And again, this is a very exciting time.
1851.66 -> Just to give you some numbers, I mentioned
1854.7 -> that the drug tPA, when it was approved, in 30% of patients
1858.82 -> was able to open up these type of clots, and 30% of patients
1862.17 -> had a good, functionally independent outcome.
1865.28 -> We looked at the numbers that I've
1867 -> been shown for the recent trials for endovascular stroke
1869.52 -> therapy, showing an excellent outcome anywhere
1871.99 -> from 40% to 70% of patients.
1874.33 -> And in terms of how often we're able to get those blood
1877.64 -> clots out and the blood vessel open,
1879.56 -> we're successful between 80% and 85% of the time,
1882.29 -> and sometimes even higher than that.
1884.36 -> So we're very good at getting blood clots out now.
1887.24 -> So that's important to keep in mind, because what does
1889.54 -> that mean for going forward?
1890.73 -> Well, I think we're going to see a few things.
1892.69 -> There's going to be better neuro-imaging triage
1894.648 -> of patients.
1895.634 -> And a large part of this, I think,
1897.05 -> is going to be trying to stop the clock.
1898.896 -> Again, it'd be great if we could just have a standard way
1901.27 -> to scan people, know whether they're
1903.27 -> going to benefit from what we can do,
1904.95 -> and also what they're likely to benefit from.
1907.764 -> I expect there'll be some further improvements
1909.68 -> in the devices that we can use to do
1911.66 -> the mechanical thrombectomy procedures.
1913.88 -> There's been a very rapid advancement already,
1916 -> and I think they can still do better, and they will.
1918.362 -> And I think there's now going to be
1919.82 -> a lot more emphasis on timeliness of these procedures.
1923.3 -> We want to be able to get patients into a hospital,
1925.912 -> get the imaging to make sure that they're the right patient
1928.37 -> to help, and get them up to the procedure room
1930.42 -> as expeditiously as possible, in order to try to help them.
1933.99 -> Those are sort of, I think, obvious next steps.
1936.08 -> And then I think, just it would be
1937.52 -> fun to speculate for a minute, about what
1939.23 -> can a place like Stanford do?
1940.98 -> And this is what I hope that we'll
1942.45 -> be starting to see in the coming, probably, 10 years.
1945.5 -> But we can get catheters to places very quickly
1948.62 -> that really is unprecedented.
1951.12 -> And it's a really unique opportunity
1953.28 -> to start to explore, well, can we
1955.26 -> do something to change the biology of a stroke itself
1957.9 -> and the after-effects?
1959.25 -> What about stem cell therapies?
1960.98 -> What if you could deliver a stem cell?
1962.59 -> Maybe not a neuronal stem cell, maybe a cell
1965.48 -> that supports the environment that the neurons need
1967.7 -> to be nourished, and sort of change the inflammatory
1970.45 -> surroundings that those cells are bathed in,
1973.04 -> in the setting of a stroke.
1974.37 -> That could potentially be a very exciting treatment
1976.52 -> that might really alter the course of even a patient that's
1978.978 -> already had a larger stroke.
1980.65 -> What about the delivery of biologic therapies?
1983.69 -> What we do right now is we give medications.
1985.93 -> It's very effective.
1987.19 -> We've been doing it for years.
1988.81 -> But we also are now in the era where
1991.33 -> we've sequenced the genome-- I was in graduate school
1993.93 -> when that happened-- and we have a better
1996.01 -> understanding of the cellular signaling that goes on
1998.289 -> in the setting of stroke.
1999.33 -> Well, what if we can start to deliver biologic therapies?
2001.87 -> You can deliver RNA that can change gene expression.
2005.19 -> What if you can do that to calm down inflammation,
2007.29 -> promote the survival of neurons?
2009.31 -> Can you deliver these things through nanoparticles?
2011.52 -> Can you package different drugs in nanoparticles
2014.16 -> to promote neuronal survival?
2016.62 -> These are all very interesting questions,
2018.34 -> and I think we're likely to see many of these technologies
2021.4 -> start to explored and exploited.
2023.862 -> And I hope that Stanford will be on the leading edge of it.
2026.32 -> And with the resources we have, I think that we will.
2029.43 -> So just by way of summary, stroke,
2032.02 -> it's a big health problem.
2033.11 -> It's caused by blockage of an artery going in the brain
2036.06 -> or going up to the brain.
2037.76 -> We went over some of the demographic numbers.
2040.14 -> 800,000 strokes in this country alone a year.
2042.74 -> It's a big public health problem,
2044.86 -> and it's a big problem for many patients and many families.
2048.06 -> And we also talked a little bit about some
2049.81 -> of the recent emerging technologies in endovascular
2052.62 -> stroke therapy and the differences
2054.639 -> that they're making for patients.
2056.639 -> And with these changes that are already happening,
2059.392 -> I know at Stanford, we're certainly
2060.85 -> going to start taking one blood clot out at a time.
2063.531 -> Each patient, we're going to do it,
2064.989 -> we're going to do our best to help them.
2066.656 -> And there are many other hospitals that are doing this.
2068.947 -> And if we keep doing this, this can really
2070.719 -> chip away at those big numbers, and that's
2072.53 -> what we're all about.
2075.03 -> If you have friends, if you're near people that you
2077.525 -> see something like this-- this is put out by the American
2079.9 -> Heart Association.
2080.65 -> The acronyms is FAST.
2082.85 -> Do they have a facial droop?
2084.6 -> Do they have arm weakness?
2085.94 -> Do they have speech difficulty?
2087.909 -> Those can be symptoms of a stroke that may be overlooked.
2091 -> And if you see them, time to call 911.
2094 -> So think about that.
2095.46 -> You may be a person who spots that.
2097.127 -> It could happen at a restaurant.
2098.46 -> Someone may look to be drunk, and it's a stroke.
2101.052 -> So keep these things in mind, because you
2102.76 -> may be able to help someone, just by having heard about it.
2106.53 -> OK.
2107.4 -> Thank you.
2107.9 -> I'm happy to take any questions.
2111.654 -> [APPLAUSE]
2114.084 ->
2115.55 -> Sir?
2116.17 -> We talk about all these clots.
2119.04 -> Why do we get the clots in the first place?
2121.49 -> A very good question.
2124.04 -> So my job is to get the clot out.
2125.74 -> The question is, where do the clots come from?
2128.7 -> So that's a big part of taking care of patients with strokes.
2132.73 -> When you come to a place like Stanford,
2134.77 -> you can't just have a couple of people involved
2138.255 -> in the care of the patient.
2139.38 -> You need a whole host of expert people.
2142.31 -> You need neurologists.
2143.42 -> You need neuro-interventionalists.
2144.836 -> You need speech therapists.
2146.14 -> You need intensivists.
2147.75 -> You need medical doctors.
2148.875 -> You need speech therapists.
2150.66 -> And much of what happens after we get the blood clot out
2153.134 -> is getting at your question.
2154.3 -> Why is it there?
2155.57 -> The most common cause is an arrhythmia in the heart.
2158.3 -> Atrial fibrillation is the number one cause of strokes
2161.17 -> that we take care of.
2162.52 -> When the heart normally beats like this,
2164.91 -> atrial fibrillation is an arrhythmia
2166.57 -> where it's irregular.
2167.7 -> It just beats in an erratic and unpredictable manner.
2171.07 -> When that happens, there are pockets
2172.74 -> of the heart where blood is not moving through
2174.94 -> because it's getting squished out in a repeated pattern.
2178.41 -> As blood pools, it forms a clot.
2180.724 -> So there can be little blood clots that hide in the heart,
2183.14 -> and those can break off and fly up and block
2185.225 -> an artery in the brain.
2187.35 -> That's the most common cause.
2189.16 -> Another cause is disease in the arteries in the neck.
2192.412 -> It can be atherosclerotic disease and narrowing
2194.37 -> that are very inflammatory.
2195.732 -> You can get a blood clot that forms
2197.19 -> on it that can fly up and block an artery in the brain.
2199.69 -> A similar process can happen in the brain itself.
2202.42 -> Good question.
2204.448 -> The person with the basilar artery problem,
2209.904 -> because it was in the back of their neck, when
2212.632 -> they were nauseated, did they also have vertigo?
2215.835 -> This patient did not.
2216.71 -> Many of the patients do.
2217.919 -> That's a very common presentation.
2219.335 -> And again, you can imagine how that's a problem.
2222.24 -> A lot of patients have vertigo.
2223.61 -> A lot of patients feel nauseous.
2225.41 -> Good question.
2226.061 -> She was asking about whether there's
2227.56 -> vertigo from a basilar stroke.
2230.69 -> The question is why do these patients have arrhythmias?
2233.33 -> The examples I showed you were, in general,
2235.86 -> younger healthy people.
2237.28 -> Many of the patients we take care of are not.
2240.7 -> Smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, hyperlipidemia,
2246.4 -> having your cholesterol be out of whack--
2248.28 -> these are the major risk factors for stroke.
2251.18 -> The vast majority of patients have that situation,
2253.53 -> which leads to heart disease and arrhythmias.
2255.99 -> You can also have an arrhythmia just because it's
2258.41 -> the way you were born, or because you've
2260.19 -> had some small damage at some point in your heart
2262.5 -> that's created an arrhythmia focus.
2265.182 -> And those can be things that are just bad luck.
2267.14 ->
2269.767 -> Good question.
2270.35 -> So the question is, well, what is the blood clot made out of?
2273.68 -> There's kind of two different things.
2275.96 -> One is that it can be made up largely fibrin,
2278.74 -> which is sort of a blood breakdown type of product.
2281.534 -> And that's the type of clot that you typically
2283.45 -> get from the heart.
2284.7 -> Some clots are made out of platelets,
2287.42 -> and those are more of the inflammatory type of clots that
2290.22 -> come from an atherosclerotic plaque that's very irritating,
2293.38 -> a lot of inflammatory change, and a platelet
2295.72 -> plug forms there and flies off.
2297.97 -> You can even get other, more goofy types of clots.
2300.87 -> You can get fat.
2301.85 -> Patients with trauma can have injury to bones,
2304.36 -> and fat can fly through and block an artery in the vein.
2307.54 -> So the question is, if you live far away
2310.21 -> from a place like Stanford, how do you
2312.23 -> get to a place like Stanford that can help you?
2315.27 -> How do you get a helicopter to come here?
2317.1 -> So we have a few ways.
2319.47 -> Number one is we actually have a network.
2321.52 -> So we have relationship with hospitals that people know.
2324.55 -> If the stroke comes into the emergency department,
2326.9 -> they can call us.
2327.94 -> Our doctors will be on the phone within five minutes.
2330.58 -> We'll listen to the story, understand what's going on.
2332.86 -> If it sounds like it's someone we can help,
2334.889 -> we can dispatch the helicopter and get them here.
2336.93 -> [INAUDIBLE]
2338.752 -> That's a good question.
2339.71 -> I've taken care of two patients from Eureka
2342.96 -> that were put on a small medical transport plane,
2346.11 -> landed at Moffett or at San Jose,
2347.96 -> and then were helicoptered up.
2349.87 -> It's a longer transport time.
2351.624 -> We were able to help both of them,
2353.04 -> and they both actually did very, very well.
2355.4 -> The unpredictability comes in that each patient's physiology
2358.25 -> is different.
2359.48 -> That transport time, the patients
2361.51 -> we took care of, that penumbra didn't shrink,
2365.22 -> and the core infarct didn't grow.
2367.32 -> You need to be able to make sure that the brain that's
2369.57 -> at risk of dying doesn't die as you're getting a patient here.
2372.294 -> And that's another big part of why we image patients
2374.46 -> when they get here.
2375.882 -> And then one more quick comment about stroke centers.
2378.09 -> Not all stroke centers are stroke centers.
2380.174 -> So there's comprehensive stroke centers,
2381.84 -> and there are stroke centers.
2383.51 -> So Stanford is a comprehensive stroke center.
2385.43 -> It's actually the first comprehensive stroke center.
2387.82 -> And that denotes-- losing my voice.
2391.95 -> That denotes a very high level of care.
2394.231 -> It means there's a neuro-interventionalist
2395.98 -> on call 24/7.
2397.29 -> There are neuro critical care doctors 24/7,
2399.59 -> neurosurgeons 24/7.
2401.54 -> It takes a lot of resources to be a comprehensive stroke
2404.78 -> center, and there are actually relatively
2406.61 -> few of those in the area.
2407.87 -> So the question is most of what I've
2409.41 -> talked about is the actual treatment of the clot when
2411.84 -> patients show up with a stroke.
2413.84 -> But what about preventing a stroke?
2416.31 -> And similar to what we were talking
2418.42 -> about for the other gentleman here, being healthy
2421.48 -> is the most important thing.
2423.96 -> Don't smoke.
2424.947 -> Get your blood pressure under control.
2426.53 -> If you have diabetes, make sure your glucose is well managed.
2429.57 -> Make sure your lipids are low.
2431.15 -> If you have atrial fibrillation, make sure
2433.8 -> that you are put on a medication,
2435.29 -> if it's appropriate when you talk to your doctor,
2437.5 -> to prevent a blood clot from forming in your heart.
2440.12 -> Coumadin-- there are now newer-generation medications
2442.38 -> that do the same thing.
2444.284 -> Those are important discussions to have,
2445.95 -> because a large amount of those efforts
2448.46 -> can prevent something like a stroke.
2450.456 -> We take care of a lot of patients
2451.83 -> that have atrial fibrillation, and they actually
2454.32 -> knew they had it, but for one reason or another,
2456.97 -> either they thought, oh, I don't need to take the medication,
2460.14 -> or they're in financial hardship and they
2462.172 -> can't afford the medication, and they come in with strokes,
2464.63 -> just because they weren't able to be
2466.54 -> on the medication they need.
2468.171 -> How does aspirin work at helping a stroke?
2469.92 -> So we like aspirin.
2471.76 -> It's a very good drug.
2472.685 -> So aspirin inhibits platelets, which
2474.989 -> is very good for blood vessel health.
2476.53 -> It's an anti-inflammatory.
2478.29 -> So a lot of stroke patients will benefit from aspirin.
2482.26 -> That's another drug that's been tried and true over the years.
2485.52 -> It's a very good preventative medicine.
2487.59 -> In the actual acute stroke, once it's happened,
2490.39 -> there's not a large role for it, in terms
2492.31 -> of breaking up the blood clot that caused the stroke.
2494.84 -> It's really a preventative medication,
2496.65 -> and it's a very good one.
2498.43 -> The question is whether you should be on a baby dose
2501.04 -> aspirin or a full dose aspirin.
2502.96 -> Different physicians have different opinions.
2504.92 -> I think many people now would tell you
2507.35 -> that the amount of inhibition of your platelets,
2509.642 -> whether you take a baby aspirin or a full dose,
2511.6 -> is very similar.
2512.76 -> And I would say that.
2513.77 -> So the question is, I showed two examples
2515.69 -> of patients that were exercising when they had their strokes.
2518.4 -> And it's not to discourage you all from exercising.
2520.64 -> What's good for your blood vessels
2522.056 -> is good for preventing a stroke.
2523.67 -> So there is a theoretical question about when you're
2527.73 -> exercising, you get a catecholamine surge,
2530.46 -> which is some of the hormones that help rev your body up
2532.86 -> for exercise.
2534 -> Those can affect your heart rate.
2535.84 -> So there's a theoretical possibility
2538.325 -> that as you're exercising, you may trip yourself
2540.87 -> into an irregular heart rate.
2542.41 -> Or by pumping the heart more, it may theoretically
2545.247 -> cause a blood clot to be more likely to break off.
2547.33 -> That being said, there's no good evidence for that.
2550.2 -> It's all hand-waving explanations.
2552.49 -> Most of the patients that we take care of
2554.51 -> are not these examples.
2556.56 -> But I find it neat to see people who
2558.76 -> are very active have bad luck, and that
2561.31 -> do very well afterwards.
2563.17 -> So the question is patients that get tPA.
2565.28 -> It's effective in one type of stroke--
2566.896 -> and I'll clarify that in a minute-- 30% of the time.
2569.94 -> And what are the risks of using it?
2572.02 -> So most of the strokes that I've been talking about today
2574.45 -> are what we call large vessel occlusion strokes,
2576.77 -> meaning you're blocking the internal carotid artery,
2579.33 -> the middle cerebral artery, very close to the skull base.
2582.47 -> Those are notoriously tough clots for tPA.
2585.25 -> And the 30% reflects what are the chances of tPA breaking up
2588.47 -> a clot in those locations?
2590.76 -> Now, if you have a smaller stroke
2592.55 -> because the blockage is further out,
2594.539 -> meaning you probably have a small blood clot that
2596.58 -> blocks something out here, tPA actually
2598.58 -> is more likely to help you in that situation.
2601.05 -> But it's really these big vessel clots
2603.07 -> that it just is not that effective.
2605.35 -> So people have started to look at this.
2607.26 -> There are a few ideas out there.
2609 -> If an artery this close to the skull is blocked,
2611.2 -> it's a big clot, which means there's a lot more surface area
2614.19 -> to dissolve.
2614.946 -> Which means if you give a drug through an IV,
2616.82 -> it's got to coat all that surface area to break it up,
2619.07 -> which is the taller order.
2620.66 -> That's one explanation.
2621.836 -> There have been studies to look at the length of the blood clot
2624.46 -> and how well it responds to tPA.
2626.312 -> There are very good studies showing
2627.77 -> that if a blood clot is longer than 8 millimeters,
2630.18 -> it actually responds very poorly to tPA.
2632.79 -> So people are looking at that as a criteria for selection
2636.09 -> for stroke therapy.
2637.044 -> One of the studies I showed you actually
2638.71 -> had that as a criteria.
2640.259 -> And then your second part of your questions
2642.05 -> was what is the risk of tPA?
2644.75 -> So the risk of tPA is actually the same risk
2646.86 -> that we tell patients.
2648.202 -> And the major risk I would tell you
2649.66 -> is causing bleeding in the brain.
2651.77 -> One of the examples I showed you,
2653.28 -> the patient, after we pulled the blood clot out,
2655.28 -> had a little bit of bleeding in the brain.
2657.43 -> That can certainly happen for a couple of reasons.
2659.88 -> One is that you have that whole area of brain that's not been
2663.33 -> getting a lot of blood flow.
2665.01 -> The blood vessels in that brain volume are damaged.
2667.69 -> They're leaky.
2668.66 -> So if suddenly, you open up the blood vessel
2670.73 -> and get a lot of blood pressure coming back into it,
2673.182 -> a little bit of blood can leak out.
2674.64 -> And that's what happened to the gentleman I showed you.
2676.98 -> However, you can also be unlucky and have a massive hemorrhage.
2681.24 -> So that's the concern.
2682.3 -> It's a small number of patients, but there
2684.66 -> is a real risk, both with tPA and what we do,
2687.986 -> of causing bleeding in the brain that can, frankly,
2690.11 -> be catastrophic.
2691.525 -> Do you see that happen sometimes?
2693.39 -> Very rarely.
2694.01 -> We've been lucky at Stanford, actually.
2695.634 -> Our numbers are very low for that,
2697.09 -> and we think it's because of the imaging selection that we do.
2700.13 -> But you definitely will see it.
2701.96 -> Yeah, so the question is if you are a patient who's had a TIA,
2705.52 -> does that in any way preclude you
2706.91 -> for being a candidate for endovascular stroke therapy.
2709.204 -> Is that correct?
2709.87 -> What's a TIA?
2711.07 -> A TIA is a Transient Ischemic Attack.
2714.5 -> And this is something that's a precursor, or something that's
2717.52 -> a high-risk sign, for a stroke that could happen.
2720.35 -> And usually what that means is-- I can't connect to [? box-- ?]
2724.43 -> is that it's telling you that you have a situation where
2727.575 -> there's something wrong, and your body's giving you
2729.7 -> a warning sign.
2731.35 -> TIA can be something like your arm is weak,
2734.25 -> and it concerns you.
2735.13 -> You notice it.
2735.63 -> But it gets better after a few seconds, or even
2737.588 -> a couple of minutes.
2738.79 -> You may have a hard time speaking for a few minutes,
2741.03 -> but then it gets better.
2742.77 -> That can be many things.
2743.8 -> That could be a seizure.
2745.69 -> It could be a TIA.
2746.84 -> It could even be a small stroke.
2748.606 -> But if you have those kind of symptoms,
2750.23 -> you need to be evaluated by a physician,
2751.91 -> because that could be a warning sign of something bigger come.
2755.34 -> If you have that, that doesn't preclude you
2757.95 -> for being treated by what we do.
2759.96 -> So the question is, there are many things that
2762.11 -> can cause strokes that we talked about,
2763.94 -> and some of the risk factors.
2764.69 -> What about if you have a problem in your carotid artery and not
2766.86 -> just your heart?
2767.59 -> And what can you do about that?
2769.04 -> How do you know about it?
2770.26 -> So there are classic symptoms that can tip you off
2773.48 -> that you have a problem with your carotid artery.
2775.9 -> A very common one is something called amaurosis fugax.
2778.91 -> And that's described as you suddenly
2781.03 -> have a veil that drops across your eye
2782.89 -> and you lose vision in one eye.
2784.42 -> And then it recovers.
2786.23 -> That's a very common sign of a problem
2787.94 -> with your carotid artery on the same side where
2789.93 -> your visual symptoms are.
2791.43 -> If you have that, that's concerning.
2792.93 -> You need to be evaluated.
2795.4 -> The way you deal with narrowing in the neck,
2798.014 -> there are many things.
2798.93 -> You do medical management.
2800.22 -> So aspirin is good.
2801.96 -> Other antiplatelet medications are
2803.81 -> very good to help with that.
2805.374 -> If the narrowing is too severe and you're having symptoms,
2807.79 -> you need to get it fixed.
2809.32 -> Two ways to fix the narrowing are surgery,
2811.38 -> to kind of go and kind of Roto-Rooter it out, clean it
2814.44 -> up, sew it back together.
2816.21 -> That's call a carotid endarterectomy.
2817.83 -> It's a very good treatment.
2819.17 -> Patients that get it tend to do very, very well.
2821.26 -> The second thing is you could put a stent in it.
2823.26 -> carotid stent.
2824.32 -> That's a procedure that we also do.
2826.019 -> And that's where you come from inside the blood vessels
2828.31 -> and you basically put a little strut to open up the narrowing.
2832.75 -> Those are good treatments for problems in the neck.
2835.38 -> Some patients will have foggy thinking.
2838.27 -> Some patients will get light-headed.
2840.055 -> They'll get weakness when they're dehydrated.
2841.93 -> There are many symptoms that you can--
2843.34 -> Yeah, so the question is, are there
2844.94 -> tests you can do to look for narrowing in the blood
2847.064 -> vessels in the neck?
2848.38 -> There are.
2849.71 -> I would say for in general, for any medical test,
2853.18 -> it should be indicated.
2854.86 -> Because if you go looking for things
2856.47 -> and you don't have a symptom, it's
2858.514 -> not a good use of resources.
2859.68 -> And honestly, it will just turn up trouble
2861.47 -> that you didn't want to know about it.
2863.08 -> But if you are symptomatic, ultrasound is very good.
2866.91 -> CT scans are very good.
2868.48 -> MRI is very good.
2870.07 -> So talk to your doctor.
2871.304 -> So she's talking about what are the risk
2872.97 -> factors for having a stroke that you
2874.469 -> might identify by blood test?
2877.12 -> So the main things are in keeping with the major risk
2880.02 -> factors of stroke.
2881.42 -> So what is your-- are you diabetic?
2883.82 -> What's your sugar?
2884.74 -> What's your hemoglobin A1c?
2886.41 -> Are those normal range?
2888.11 -> What is your lipid profile?
2889.84 -> Also very important.
2891.63 -> Those are the kind of tests that most of us
2893.87 -> will, if we go see our primary care doctor, will look into.
2897.42 -> Things about your heart-- some patients will say, you know,
2900.3 -> I notice I don't have a normal heart rhythm when
2902.8 -> I put my finger on my pulse.
2904.11 -> Or I have palpitations, the sense that my heart's
2906.37 -> skipping a beat.
2907.327 -> Those are symptomatic things that you're not necessarily
2909.66 -> going to see by a blood test, but it's
2911.243 -> similar in terms of identifying a risk factor.
2914.315 -> [INAUDIBLE]
2914.814 ->
2917.56 -> So inflammatory markers right now,
2919.47 -> in terms of stroke risk factors, is not
2921.41 -> something that has been widely studied.
2924.14 -> And it'll be interesting to see if that does come out
2928.22 -> in the future as something that's important.
2932.496 -> Sir?
2933.488 -> When was TIA developed, and how much does it cost?
2936.96 -> tPA?
2937.833 -> tPA.
2938.68 -> So 1995 is when it was approved.
2941.077 -> I'm actually not sure when it was developed before that.
2943.41 -> tPA.
2944.03 -> Yeah.
2944.53 -> And I actually don't know what they charge for it now.
2947.162 -> I would say that anything what they
2948.62 -> charge for, it's very hard to know what it actually costs.
2952.03 -> Yeah, so it's a good question.
2953.43 -> So the question is, you know, there are a lot of delays.
2955.93 -> If you're going to be someone who's going to get tPA,
2958.82 -> there are a lot of delays in getting you to a hospital
2961.76 -> so that you're eligible for the tPA.
2964.06 -> And calling a paramedic, an ambulance transport,
2967.45 -> getting into the ER and being seen, and understanding
2969.7 -> what's going on, those things can add up,
2971.31 -> and what if that pushes you out of the window where
2973.435 -> you can get the medication?
2974.57 -> And so why not just train paramedics
2976.61 -> to identify stroke and give tPA in the field?
2980.61 -> That's a very good thought.
2982.069 -> But I would say there's a few things that we have
2984.11 -> to make sure we understand.
2985.27 -> Number one is not everything that looks
2987.46 -> like a stroke is a stroke.
2989.66 -> So seizures can look like a stroke.
2991.58 -> Low blood sugar can look like a stroke.
2993.83 -> Intracranial tumors can look like a stroke.
2996.34 -> A patient who's had a hypertensive hemorrhage
2998.39 -> in the brain can look like a stroke.
3000.35 -> And it is important to understand
3002.17 -> what you're dealing with, because although the risk
3004.4 -> of tPA is relatively low, if you massively expand
3008.03 -> the number of patients that you're going to treat
3010.517 -> and don't really understand what the diagnosis is,
3012.6 -> you will hurt a lot of people, particularly patients
3014.99 -> with tumors that are causing their symptoms,
3016.93 -> or who have already hemorrhaged.
3018.31 -> Because you're going to make them bleed more.
3021.21 -> But people have started to do what you're asking.
3024.56 -> So in Europe, for example, they have little lands
3027.35 -> that have a CT scanner in them.
3028.81 -> And they can drive these mobile stroke units around,
3031.55 -> scan the patient in the field, have a neuroradiologist
3034.16 -> interpret the image, give the thumbs up,
3036.22 -> and they can start to give the tPA in the field.
3038.94 -> So you can start to think about things like that.
3042.26 -> But that has been tossed around.
3043.76 -> But there are those limitations to it.
3045.54 -> And then just to clarify the numbers-- so fewer than 10%
3048.12 -> of patients are eligible for tPA because of the time
3050.63 -> constraints.
3051.77 -> And of the patients that get tPA compared to that do not,
3057.16 -> 30% will have a good clinical outcome
3059.01 -> and be functionally independent.
3060.46 -> So the question is, what is sort of the communication
3063.61 -> between the imaging, the people looking at the imaging,
3066.089 -> and the neuro-interventionalist who's
3067.63 -> going to go and try to get the blood clot?
3069.66 -> So it's very highly integrated.
3072.9 -> The people that do these procedures
3074.58 -> now come from a variety of backgrounds,
3077.19 -> the most common backgrounds being neuroradiologists
3080.03 -> like myself, neurologists who are trained in stroke,
3083 -> and neurosurgeons who are trained
3085.18 -> in stroke through endovascular techniques.
3089.03 -> So all of those groups are very savvy with neuro-imaging.
3093.07 -> It's very important that we understand
3095.15 -> the anatomy of the brain.
3097.11 -> And all those people that do this
3098.944 -> should have a very good understanding
3100.485 -> of the brain anatomy, as well as of the vasculature anatomy.
3104.73 -> The way it works at Stanford, and I
3106.27 -> don't know how it works everywhere,
3107.728 -> but I think most places try to do this.
3109.91 -> When we are made aware of a patient who's been flown in,
3112.9 -> our team is activated before they arrive.
3115.5 -> So I'm there at the scanner, waiting for the patient
3117.99 -> to show up.
3119.12 -> We clinically evaluate the patient.
3121.305 -> We are there when the patient goes right into the magnet,
3123.68 -> and we're looking at the images in real time
3125.513 -> while they're in the MRI or the CT scan.
3127.57 -> So that interpretation happens by us instantaneously,
3130.52 -> and we make a decision, by the time
3131.997 -> they wheel out of the scanner, whether we're taking them
3134.33 -> with us up to the cath lab or whether they're
3136.47 -> someone that's not likely to benefit
3138.02 -> from what we have to offer.
3139.81 -> Other places have-- they can look at imaging on their phones
3143.62 -> or their computers at home.
3145.346 -> There's a variety of set-ups.
3146.554 ->
3149.458 -> As a stroke preventative, can you give us your thoughts
3152.475 -> on blood thinners?
3154.71 -> If you need one, take it.
3156.488 -> [LAUGHTER]
3158.78 -> So the question is, what is the thought on blood thinners?
3161.95 -> So if you have an indication to take a blood thinner
3165.8 -> and your doctor tells you it's a good idea,
3167.99 -> then I think it's a good idea.
3169.787 -> But you've got to remember, everything
3171.37 -> that we do is not without risk.
3174.5 -> So should we all just take an aspirin?
3177.72 -> Should we all just be on Coumadin to prevent it?
3180.5 -> Well, a certain percentage of us,
3181.937 -> and it's not a small percent, is going
3183.52 -> to have a complication from that.
3184.92 -> And that could even be bleeding in the brain.
3186.9 -> And you want to just make sure you
3188.652 -> have a reason for the medication you're taking,
3190.61 -> because you are accepting a little bit of risk
3192.72 -> any time you put something in your body.
3194.82 -> The question is, is there a benefit
3197.03 -> to drinking red wine to clear out the arteries?
3199.28 -> There are studies that have shown
3202.07 -> moderate consumption of red wine to be
3205.03 -> good for your cardiovascular health.
3207.12 -> I do not know the literature on that,
3208.68 -> in terms of stroke prevention.
3209.93 -> In general, what is good for your cardiovascular health
3212.221 -> is good for stroke prevention.
3214.48 -> But I don't know the data as to whether having
3217.23 -> a glass of red wine a night, what's your decrease stroke
3220.475 -> risk from that.
3221.1 -> It's an interesting question.
3222.82 -> Good question.
3223.42 -> So there's two parts to the question that's being asked.
3225.753 -> One is, what are your options if you
3227.42 -> get to the hospital outside of the time windows we discussed,
3230.2 -> in terms of treating you, because you didn't recognize
3232.45 -> the symptoms, or for some other reason?
3234.482 -> And the second part of the question
3235.94 -> is, well, what about if there's a blood clot that's
3238.54 -> very far away, that's not something
3240.212 -> that's really safe for us to get to
3241.67 -> from inside the blood vessels?
3243.58 -> So first off, if you get to the hospital outside of that four
3246.92 -> and a half-hour time window when you get tPA,
3249.96 -> we can still offer you treatment from an endovascular
3252.9 -> perspective.
3254.75 -> That right now, there are good data for going out
3257.09 -> to six to eight hours.
3259.09 -> That being said, most major academic medical centers
3262.33 -> are now making their decisions based on the imaging
3264.76 -> profile that I talked about.
3266.56 -> So we have taken patients 12-plus hours out,
3269.73 -> because they get here, we do a scan,
3271.49 -> they've got a small stroke, they've got a lot of brain
3273.78 -> at risk, and there's a clot that we can get to.
3275.999 -> And I think increasingly, we're going
3277.54 -> to start to see more of that.
3279.39 -> So you do have options.
3281.41 -> Number two, what if you have a small artery
3283.624 -> that's blocked way out here?
3284.79 -> What can be done?
3286.76 -> There's a little bit of a gray zone.
3288.26 -> And I would say you have to be thoughtful.
3291.42 -> Because which artery is blocked?
3293.43 -> If you come into me and your symptoms are you
3296.58 -> can't speak because your angular artery
3298.587 -> is blocked on your dominant hemisphere
3300.17 -> on the left, that's going to leave you with a pretty
3303 -> significant neurologic deficit.
3305.34 -> A patient like that, we would actually
3307.12 -> consider taking to the procedure room
3308.76 -> and putting a microcatheter into that artery, as far as we can,
3312.26 -> and giving tPA to break up the clot.
3314.549 -> It's not safe to put a device out to pull the clot out,
3316.84 -> in my opinion, that far out.
3318.1 -> But there are options.
3319.66 -> If it's a smaller blood vessel, that maybe your symptoms are
3322.68 -> less profound, it's a cost/benefit.
3325.17 -> The risk of these procedures is not zero.
3327.5 -> And maybe the odds of you recovering some function, or it
3330.42 -> not really limiting what you do, you just say, you know what?
3334.074 -> We're going to keep your blood pressure appropriate place,
3336.49 -> and help you recover.
3337.722 -> That's a good question.
3338.68 -> So the question is among the patients with stroke
3341.8 -> that come in, what's the breakdown of men and women?
3344.96 -> So you know, there are many more patients with stroke that
3347.76 -> come into Stanford than I see.
3349.601 -> So the patients that we see are the ones who are really sick
3352.1 -> and have a blood vessel that's blocked that's really
3354.266 -> close to the brain.
3355.45 -> I've got to for us, it's pretty 50-50.
3358.14 -> We took care of a gentleman today,
3359.8 -> and yesterday we took care of a lady.
3362.38 -> And that kind of pans out.
3363.75 -> It's really pretty close to 50-50 now.
3367.671 -> One more.
3368.17 -> That's it, though, before I get yelled at.
3370.37 -> [LAUGHTER]
3371.238 -> Go ahead.
3372.54 -> Some hospitals offer stroke risk assessment.
3376.774 -> Does Stanford do that?
3378.437 -> That's a good question.
3379.395 -> Nick, are you here?
3381.296 -> Do you know?
3383.398 -> I don't.
3384.48 -> I don't know the answer to that.
3386.328 -> I live in Alameda, and the hospital there
3389.72 -> offers that quarterly.
3391.905 -> So--
3392.924 -> That's something that we should certainly look into.
3395.09 -> I don't know that we have a clinic that does that.
3397.84 -> We certainly have doctors that, you know, everyone
3400.11 -> in our network, if you come in and see your primary care
3403.39 -> physician in the Stanford network,
3404.88 -> you're going to get asked the questions that
3406.24 -> are going to be pertinent to your stroke risk.
3408.46 -> But someone who, you know, a specific stroke
3410.78 -> clinic about what your stroke risk is,
3412.48 -> I don't know if we have that.
3413.688 -> We can find that out for you.
3415.272 -> So.
3416.625 -> Thank you, Dr. Heit.
3418.43 -> My pleasure.
3419.08 -> Thank you all for coming.
3420.28 -> [APPLAUSE]
3421.452 ->

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLH18_y0EIY