SVIN announces “Stroke: Mission Thrombectomy 2020”

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The Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology (SVIN) has announced the launch of Mission Thrombectomy 2020, an initiative to enhance global efforts to improve stroke care worldwide by increasing the rate of stroke thrombectomy for eligible patients from less than 100,000 procedures today to 202,000 annually by 2020 and thereby reducing global stroke disability.

Stroke thrombectomy is the new highly effective standard of care that reverses paralysis from stroke in over 60% of patients if done by experts within six hours of stroke symptoms. The initiative was unveiled at the SVIN 9th Annual Meeting and 4th Annual Stroke Center Workshop (16–19 November, Brooklyn, USA).

“In 2015, mechanical thrombectomy was definitively proven to be enormously beneficial in reversing stroke disability and become standard of care for stroke patients with blockage of one of the main brain arteries. This has revolutionised the treatment for such patients,” says Dileep Yavagal, past president of SVIN, who is leading this effort. “SVIN has set an ambitious worldwide goal to treat every eligible stroke patient emergently with mechanical thrombectomy, but this can only be achieved if we maximise access to hospitals with mechanical thrombectomy capability of severe stroke with within six hours of their symptoms.”

In order to maximise access to thrombectomy for the potential 1.7 million patients worldwide with stroke due to a large artery blockage, SVIN aims to partner with several non-profit medical societies, governmental and industry collaborators worldwide to achieve their initiative by focusing on efforts to improve public awareness for stroke symptoms, supporting legislation to encourage rapid triage of stroke patients, establishing financial initiatives to improve access to care for countries without health insurance and encouraging the development of new technologies to improve stroke assessment and treatment. Currently less than 100,000 procedures are performed worldwide in 2016.

“Mission Thrombectomy 2020 advances the overall mission of SVIN of innovation to improve outcomes of the largest number of stroke patients all over the world,” says Raul Nogueira, president of SVIN. “This campaign will consolidate various efforts from multiple stakeholders with a clear patient metric to be achieved in three years.”

Globally each year, strokes affect about 16 million people and kill an estimated 5.7 million. The annual US healthcare overall cost due to stroke is US$104 billion. Stroke is a very time sensitive disease and requires intervention within six hours. Without appropriate diagnosis and treatment, a majority of surviving stroke patients suffer permanent disability. Despite the recent advances of mechanical thromectomy, which reduces disability and saves lives, less than 10 percent of eligible stroke patients are treated surgically due to the lack of a portable diagnostic device for early detection.