The FDA approved intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) for the treatment of patients with acute ischemic stroke more than 15 years ago. Dr. Mark Alberts writes in the current Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that even though tPA is the only acute medical therapy proven to reduce disability and improve outcomes in these patients, it still remains vastly underutilized as a treatment. Many patients who should be treated with intravenous tPA do not receive it for reasons that are unclear, subjective or simply incorrect. Failure to treat strokes with tPA causes avoidable injury.
Hospital Beats MRSA and Other Deadly Infections
Hunterdon Medical Center, a smaller 178 bed community hospital in central New Jersey, is beating the MRSA bacteria that cause some of the most deadly and costly infections in hospitalized patients, as recently reported in the Wall Street Journal. The hospital uses an Infection Prevention Program that has reduced the frequency of Clostridium Difficile (C. Diff.) infections by 79% and Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) by 66%. These infections are largely responsible for much of the $33 billion cost associated with preventable infections in hospitalized patients. Currently, 1 in 20 patients admitted to hospitals gets a potentially deadly infection.
