Chennai: “For every year, there are 8,000 people getting affected with stroke in Chennai and about a lakh in Tamilnadu. Among them, only 20 per cent reach hospital at the right time,” said Apollo Speciality Hospitals OMR interventional neurologist, Dr Karthikeyan.

He was speaking at an event held in the city to discuss the occurrence of stroke and heart attack together. In a first-of-its-kind in India, the hospital received an 83-year-old patient with both the conditions at the same time.

Addressing the media, he said, “The patient was brought with limb weakness and chest pain, it was identified that he suffered block in the heart as well as symptoms of a stroke. The doctors performed angioplasty to remove the clot in the blood vessel in his heart within 15 to 20 minutes and immediately performed mechanical thrombectomy to remove the clot from his brain and stabilized him.”

He also stated that it is a very rare occurrence and it’s highly fatal we manage to save both the organs and he recovered completely from the symptoms.

Interventional cardiologist Dr Arul stated that age is no bar for occurence of health ailments. “There are a lot of complications involved when stroke and myocardial infarction affects the patient. For heart attack, high dose of blood thinners should be given. However, heavy dose is not safe for stroke. Like this, we are subjected to a lot of challenges,” Arul said.

The hospital also treated three other patients who had suffered both heart attack and stroke in short intervals.
“When a person gets stroke, the patient has to be brought within 4.5 hours (golden hour) to inject a drug to dissolve the clot. If not brought within the stipulated time, medical intervention should be sought at least within 24 hours,” Karthikeyan said.