Saanich News, April 03, 2013

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Artist roars

Student top in Canada for Lions Club contest. Page A3

NEWS: The first in our series on amalgamation /A6 ARTS: Performing arts grads have an epiphany /A14 SPORTS: Highlanders woo Mexican playboys /A22

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Saanich parks staff member Moses Pimentel sits near the CT scan machine at Victoria General Hospital, where he had a brain scan last June after suffering a stroke. The Vancouver Island Health Authority and Genome B.C. have launched a $10 million project based at VGH for early stroke detection. Edward Hill/News staff

Stopping strokes before they hit Victoria hosts $10M project to make the warning signs of stroke easy to detect

Edward Hill Reporting

N FR O

O C EA

W

hen Moses Pimentel found himself collapsed on his bathroom floor one Sunday morning last June, a stroke wasn’t the first ailment that came to mind. He even wondered why his wife called an ambulance.

Paramedics conducted a rapid assessment on the fit, healthy, 47-year-old Saanich parks staffer, and found telltale left body paralysis. They rushed him to the care of Dr. Andrew Penn, a neurologist at Victoria General Hospital. Penn and his staff at VGH, the nucleus of stroke care on Vancouver Island, found Pimentel’s underlying heart defect that triggered the stroke, but it was that rapid response that was crucial in preventing lasting damage. Pimentel regained control of his body the same day, was out of hos-

NT

pital in six days and back to work in two months. “Without that rapid assessment who knows what would have happened? I have a physical job and a family to take care of,” Pimentel said. “I’m not sure what I would have done.” Recognizing that quick and early detection of strokes can save lives and medical resources, the Vancouver Island Health Authority and Genome B.C. have launched a $10 million project that will give emergency room doctors a tool for nearly instanta-

neous diagnosis of a minor stroke, called a transient ischemic attack (TIA). “If you think of stroke as an earthquake, a TIA is the rumbling before the earthquake,” Penn said during the project announcement at VGH on Thursday. About 10 per cent of minor strokes lead to full-blown major strokes within two days, but diagnosing a TIA is difficult and expensive.

AG E ACR E

O PE

H O U SN Sat. 1-3E

10715 Bayfield Rd SIDNEY $1,599,900

56-118 Aldersmith Pl VIEW ROYAL $429,000

495 Goward Road BEAVER LAKE $665,000

250.744.3301 www.roxannebrass.com remaxroxanne@shaw.ca

PlEASE SEE: Island stroke database, Page A2


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