STROKE SMART WITH A VIDEO ADVANTAGE
Next time you're in your local Blockbuster Video store, you can swing around to the free-rental, community-service section, and pick up some potentially lifesaving information along with this month's big hit.
Thanks to a public service effort headed by George Teitelbaum, M.D., associateprofessor of neurological surgery at the USC School of Medicine, a new video about stroke can be checked outfreeat virtually every Blockbuster store in the U.S.
Academy Award® winners Jack Lemmon and Patricia Neal host "Brain Attack! A New Way of Looking at Stroke," which discusses risk factors, symptoms and prevention tips for the nation's third-leading cause of death.
Stroke strikes more than half a million people each year, causing 150,000 deaths. Yet, Teitelbaum estimates that nearly 80 percent of strokes are preventable with early treatment.
"We wanted to tell the public everything that they need to know about stroke," says Teitelbaum. The video includes information on a wide range of treatments for stroke, including conventional surgery and the use of "clot-busting" drugs, and also touches on investigational balloon angioplasty procedures that can open blocked arteries serving the brain.
In addition to Lemmon and Neal, the video features medical experts drawn from the USC School of Medicine: David Faxon, M.D., professor of medicine, Mark Fisher, M.D., professor of neurology, and Steven Giannotta, M.D., professor of neurological surgery, explain stroke from the perspective of their own specialties. Former neurosurgery chief resident Jeff Thomas, M.D., guides viewers through the half-hour presentation.
"Previously, stroke was a disease that was untreatable," explains Fisher in the video. "But that's not true anymore."
"Most of all, we want to make the point that when a stroke occurs, every minute counts," Teitelbaum says. Neurosurgeons and neurologists have adopted the term "brain attack" to convey that urgency, hoping that the public's familiarity with heart attack will provide some valuable understanding of a similar condition.
The symptoms of stroke should be treated as a medical emergency, says Teitelbaum, and the first few hours after a stroke are critical. During that time, patients can be treated with clot-busting, or thrombolytic, drugs, that re-establish blood-flow to the brain before irreplaceable cells begin to die. The sooner people seek medical help after experiencing warning signs of stroke, the better their chances of recovery. Teitelbaum hopes that the wide availability of the video can teach thousands of people exactly what those early warning signs are.
In addition to medical experts, several patients describe their own experiences during and after brain attacks, and how brain attack was treated in each of their cases. In one dramatic case, brain attack survivor Karen Horlick tells her story of a serious stroke, clot-busting therapy received within six hours after the onset of symptoms, and a recovery that has left her with virtually no lasting effects of the potentially crippling episode.
The video was conceived, written and produced in less than a year. And when Teitelbauminterventional-radiologist-turned-producerand his colleagues finished the project, a deal was struck with Blockbuster, landing the video in roughly 3800 stores nationwide.
"Brain Attack" is presented by the Center for Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disorders at USC University Hospital in cooperation with the National Stroke Association. Plans for Chinese- and Spanish-language versions are now in the works.