Patricia Fointno of Merrillville couldn’t understand why she suddenly fainted in front of her class of first graders. The elementary school music teacher only remembers turning to go sit down. When she opened her eyes, she was on the classroom floor surrounded by a few co-workers, the school nurse and the principal.
“My students were little angels,” she says. “They knew just what to do when they saw me fall.”
Fointno was rushed to Community Hospital in Munster where she spent the next few days undergoing tests.
Neurosurgeon Demetrius Lopes, MD, medical director of Neuroendovascular care at Community Hospital, scheduled Fointno for the hospital’s first diagnostic cerebral angiogram in the hybrid operating room. If a clot or blockage was found, they could remove it then and there. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary.
“We were able to get a clear picture of what was happening with the vessels in Patricia’s brain,” says Lopes. “We were able to rule out a stroke, but could see she had stenosis in several areas on the left side. For now, we determined we could treat it with medication and lifestyle changes.”
The availability of such sophisticated technology and expertise in Northwest Indiana is a game changer for the community. While Fointno’s condition was not stroke related, each year there are thousands of individuals in Lake County alone, who experience stroke and rely on their neighborhood hospitals as their first line of care.
Of the more than two thousand strokes that occur in Northwest Indiana, about 80 percent of them are the type where blockages occur in the blood vessels, says Lopes. “The other 20 percent are bleeding or hemorrhaging vessels in the brain. As they say, ‘time is brain’. The sooner we can implement the correct treatment for the type of stroke, the better the outcome.”
“Today, we have all the pieces in place to change the way stroke is treated in Northwest Indiana,” says Jill Conner, RN, administrative director of Neuroscience, Cerebrovascular and Structural Heart Services at Community Hospital. “Working with our EMS providers and our healthcare colleagues across the region, we are able to significantly improve the outcomes of patients who have had an acute hemorrhagic stroke.”
For more information about stroke care at the hospitals of Community Healthcare System, visit comhs.org/stroke.
