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New Stroke Unit for Portimão hospital
• 25 Oct 2007 •
 THE new Stroke Unit at Portimão’s Barlavento Hospital which has been operating since the beginning of the month was officially inaugurated last week. The facility, with capacity to receive three patients simultaneously, is sharing the same medical team as the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. During the inauguration ceremony, Algarve’s Regional Health Administration also presented a new service dubbed ‘Via Verde AVC’ which improves co-ordination between the hospital and emergency medical services to ensure timely transportation to the hospital.
Ambulance crews taking a person with a suspected stroke are now able to alert the hospital before they arrive. The service to fast-track stroke patients is designed to enable early diagnosis and treatment. People arriving at Barlavento Hospital suffering from the condition will be able to go straight to the Stroke Unit.
It is hoped this will enable the medical team which is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to immediately evaluate any patient who may have had a stroke. Therefore, patients will be able to receive the most appropriate medical care as early as possible, which can reduce the effects of an attack. Emergency treatment with clot-busting drugs can often limit the amount of damage caused to a person after having a stroke.
The new service is activated through the 112 emergency phone number and involves at its first stage the intervention of the National Medical Emergency Institute (INEM) for diagnosis, pre-hospital treatment and, where necessary, transport to hospitals with specialist units for handling heart attacks and strokes. Besides the INEM and Barlavento Hospital, the fast-track stroke service in the Algarve involves Lagos Hospital’s Basic Emergency Unit, as well as the 24-hour-service of the Albufeira, Loulé and Vila Real de Santo António Health Centres, the Faro Hospital Coronary Intensive Care Unit, the Stroke Unit of Faro Hospital and the specialist Cardiovascular Intervention Unit. According to Veloso Gomes, Regional Co-ordinator for the Prevention and Control of Cardiovascular Disease, some 600 patients have been treated at Faro Hospital's Stroke Unit since June 2006 and every year there are more than 350 cases in the Western Algarve area only.
The president of Algarve’s Regional Health Administration, Rui Lourenço, said: “We had to do something to increase stroke patients’ chances of survival, particularly in the first few hours after an attack. We believe that this new fast-track service will provide an excellent opportunity to improve the care we provide as well as improving the outcome for patients." |  Return to Top
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