Equipment for stroke victims proves valuable to UPMC Horizon president

Doctors can see patients through a secure
vidoeconferencing system.

By LAURE CIOFFI

VINDICATOR PENNSYLVANIA BUREAU

FARRELL, Pa. — When UPMC Horizon got some new equipment last summer that instantly linked up emergency stroke victims to neurosurgeons in Pittsburgh, hospital President Joel Yuhas thought it was a valuable resource.

Now, he’s just grateful it was there.

The equipment took on new significance for the hospital president when his 71-year-old mother Beverly Yuhas suffered a stroke while visiting and needed immediate care.

Beverly Yuhas of Elyria, Ohio, was visiting her son late last summer when she started getting a chill and then couldn’t communicate.

“She mumbled something and then half of her face began to droop,” Joel Yuhas said.

She was rushed by ambulance to UPMC Horizon’s Farrell campus and was taken to the emergency room where the hospital had recently acquired telemedicine equipment — a sophisticated Internet-based videoconferencing system that allows the Pittsburgh doctors to see and speak to patients and others in the emergency room instantly.

Dr. Tudor Jovin, a vascular neurosurgeon at Stroke Institute of UPMC in Pittsburgh, was working when Mrs. Yuhas was brought in.

“She came in with a pretty severe neurological deficit,” Dr. Jovin said.

She was given a powerful clot-busting drug, tissue plasminogen activator or tPA, and taken by medical helicopter to the UPMC Stroke Center, located at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Dr. Jovin said they will leave patients at the local hospital that they feel can be safely managed, but bring the more severe cases to Pittsburgh.

“Based on her symptoms, there was a real concern that there was a major blockage in her brain,” he said.

A scan of her brain in Pittsburgh showed a major blockage of a vessel, but it also showed doctors that it was partially opening with the help of the tPA. Jovin said it’s been his experience blockages tends to open completely once they start, but they kept her under observation. If it wasn’t successful, Jovin said he would have to surgically place a catheter in the vessel to remove the blockage.

Beverly Yuhas, however, eventually started improving and within hours was able to communicate again.

“She was definitely in the right place at the right time,” her son said.

Dr. Jovin said the UPMC Stroke Center was the first hospital to use telemedicine equipment when it was first acquired in March 2006. It’s now in 10 affiliate hospitals in western Pennsylvania that are linked to UPMC through telemedicine. UPMC Horizon installed it in the Farrell and Greenville campuses in July.

Jovin said the Internet-based video equipment is a completely secure line. That equipment, in addition to other technology that allows the Pittsburgh doctors to see X-rays and other images online as they are completed, allows them to offer the care of a major stroke center to smaller facilities.

“What I’m grateful for, aside from having Mom with us, is being able to offer the community a unique ability to access a true stroke program,” Yuhas said.

Beverly Yuhas is happy that her care was so fast. She was able to leave the hospital within three days and has no lasting effects from the stroke.

“I drove my car the same day I got home. I was in the right place at the right time,” she said.

cioffi@vindy.com