SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — As we continue to explore life-saving technology at our area hospitals, those at Upstate University Hospital turn to a tool called RAPID to enhance patient care.
“This has been a game-changer in stroke care for the last several years,” said Josh Onyan, the program manager at the Upstate Stroke Center.
Upstate started using the software in 2017.
We get a picture of the patient, a CT scan of their head, and the images get sent up to a cloud where they’re processed with advanced software through RAPID and the images get sent back to our phones. We can make a decision for treatment, probably within the first 10 minutes that the patients here.
Josh Onyan — Upstate Stroke Center Program Manager
That timeline is huge, considering the American Stroke Association mandates a 90-minute window from hospital arrival to stroke treatment.
For surgeons like Dr. Julius Gene Latorre, it’s a life-saving tool.
“It allows for us to determine how much of the brain has been infarcted, meaning that they’re already dead, and how much of the brain is still alive. You can quantify the amount of tissue damage that is irreversible.”
Dr. Latorre
“It will give us the size of the embarkation or the stroke tissue of the brain, it also gives us the size of the penumbra or the tissue that’s still salvageable. We use those comparisons to decide if a patient can go for a thrombectomy,” said Onyan.
The scoring system helps surgeons decipher tissue faster, and by sending all those images to one place, the entire team can see the scans in real-time.
“I would say probably we save anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 minutes of time,” said Latorre.
It’s technology meeting healthcare to supplement their needs and save lives.
Onyan says RAPID has some new features. Upstate Medical University is in the process of training staff to roll out the new and enhanced applications through RAPID.
