Dr Timothy Ang:
Telestroke is a virtual model of care to allow collaboration between local and remote clinicians for the treatment of very complex medical emergencies. And that's really important when it comes to acute stroke because time is brain. And the sooner you can get to treatments, the more effective they are, the less disability that might be sustained long term, and the lower the mortality rate.
My name is Timothy Ang, and I'm a vascular neurologist and neurointerventionist, working mainly out of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, but also joining many of my colleagues in the New South Wales Telestroke Service. The benefit of a multidisciplinary approach to an acute stroke is that you get tailored, individualized, and very precise treatment plans for the patient that could suffer a very devastating degree of disability or even die from the condition.
Stroke care really takes people who are passionate about what they do and puts them together and helps them work in a very efficient way to achieve the best outcomes for their patients. One of the things that we encourage everyone across the country, and really around the world, is to know the acronym FAST. That stands for Face, Arm, Speech. So if you have any problems, any symptoms related to your face, arm, or speech, T is for time. Call 000 and get your patient, yourself, or your loved one into the hands of emergency professionals.
