When an artery to the brain blocks, brain tissue begins to die within minutes. Removing the clot restores flow. Everything about this condition is decided by how quickly it is recognised and how quickly the patient reaches a centre that can treat it.
Call +91 76780 63385 and dial 108 for an ambulance. Note the time the person was last seen well — not the time they were found. That single fact decides which treatments remain possible.
Stroke is usually painless, which is exactly why it is ignored. Any one of these signs is enough.
Given intravenously in the emergency department once a scan has excluded bleeding, within four and a half hours of symptom onset in eligible patients.
For a blockage in one of the large arteries, the clot is removed directly. A catheter is passed from the groin or wrist to the blocked vessel and the clot is retrieved with a stent retriever or aspirated. Restoring flow can produce dramatic recovery. It is generally performed within six hours of onset, and in selected patients up to twenty-four hours when perfusion imaging shows brain tissue that is still salvageable.
An ambulance can alert the receiving hospital, which means the scanner and the team are ready on arrival. Families who drive the patient themselves frequently go to the nearest hospital rather than one able to perform thrombectomy, and the transfer that follows costs the time that decided the outcome.
Treatment of the blockage is the beginning. Finding the cause — atrial fibrillation, carotid disease, a small-vessel process — determines how the next stroke is prevented. Rehabilitation, blood pressure control, diabetes and cholesterol management do more for long-term outcome than any single procedure.
That is usually the right question, and often the answer is no. Send the scans and you will get a straight opinion — including when the safest course is to do nothing and watch.