UC Irvine Healthcare’s Stroke and Cerebrovascular Center offers patients with strokes and other diseases affecting blood vessels that supply the brain state-of-the-art diagnosis and treatment, including specialty care by interventional neuroradiologists. The center’s highly trained team also includes neurologists, neurosurgeons, rehabilitation physicians and other professionals at Orange County’s only university hospital.

Primary Stroke Center

The center is the first in Orange County, and among the first in the nation, to earn national certification as a Primary Stroke Center by The Joint Commission, healthcare's predominant standards-setting and accrediting body. This designation lets emergency medical professionals know which area hospitals are best equipped to diagnose and treat stroke patients in the critical minutes and hours after the initial symptoms.

Led by Dr. Vivek Jain, the center has held advanced certification from The Joint Commission since 2004 and was among the nation's first academic medical facilities to be designated as a primary stroke center. It won recertification and the commission’s Gold Seal of Approval in March 2010.

Stroke Receiving Center

In April 2009, Orange County’s Health Care Agency designated UC Irvine Medical Center as a regional Stroke-Neurology Receiving Center, which indicates to paramedics and ambulance drivers that the stroke center provides the highest of neurovascular care.

Not all hospitals have the resources or personnel to effectively treat a stroke. The county requires that a Stroke-Neurology Receiving Center have a dedicated medical director, an emergency-medicine physician on-site at all times, and a neurologist, neurosurgeon and radiologist always on call.

In addition, UC Irvine’s Stroke and Cerebrovascular Center has 24-hour access to an interventional neuroradiologist who can extract a stroke-inducing blood clot by inserting a catheter into the arteries supplying a patient's brain.

Clot-busting drugs

Another advance in stroke treatment is the drug tPA-tissue plasminogen activator, which breaks up clots. However, it must be administered within three hours of the onset of stroke symptoms to prevent permanent brain damage. Yet only about 3 percent of U.S. stroke patients reach a hospital quickly enough to be considered for this treatment. The Stroke-Neurology Receiving Center system promises to improve those chances.

Stroke, leading cause of disability and death

Stroke is the No. 1 cause of disability and the third leading cause of death in the United States, with about 730,000 cases each year, about 8,000 of them in Orange County. A stroke, or brain attack, occurs when a blood vessel in the brain is blocked (by a blood clot) or bursts. If you or someone you know is experiencing symptoms, seek medical help immediately. The quicker treatment begins, the better a patient’s chances for survival and recuperation. New clot-busting drugs can help reduce disability, but they must be given within a few hours of the onset of symptoms.

Warning signs of a stroke »