Leading the stroke team is neurologist Steven Warach, MD, Ph.D., chief of the section of Stroke Diagnostics and Therapeutics in the Stroke Branch of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Other members of the team include a combination of Suburban and NIH neurologists, internists, intensive-care physicians, nurses, radiologists, researchers and rehabilitative therapists. Suburban Hospital's new stroke team evolved from a unique partnership between the hospital and the National Institutes of Health, located across the street from the hospital on Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda. Integral to the research are two highly advanced MRI scanners housed in the new NIH-Suburban MRI Center at the hospital. More than 730,000 Americans have a stroke each year.
Stroke is a medical emergency that requires immediate medical care, just like a heart attack.
Ischemic strokes are the most common, accounting for approximately 80 percent of all strokes. They are caused by a blockage of blood flow to the brain. A hemorrhagic stroke occurs when blood vessels burst, causing bleeding within or around the brain. Both kinds of stroke quickly rob brain cells of oxygen-carrying blood, causing the body functions controlled by those cells to be damaged or permanently lost. The new ultrafast MRI scanners have shown us that the stroke process evolves over hours and days and that injured parts of the brain can potentially be prevented from progressing to permanent damage if treated with appropriate therapies.