A Sunshine Coast woman who suffered a bleed on the brain five years after her son suffered a stroke has hailed the forthcoming arrival of a life-saving machine.
Teresa Armesto De Winter has welcomed the purchase of a biplane unit, which was made possible by charity Wishlist’s Giving Day.
“I know it costs a lot of money but it’s a priceless piece of equipment,” she said.
“The amount of lives it’s going to save …. and the time it’s going to save will mean less injury to people’s brains.
“For something to be like that on the Coast, it’s just priceless.
“The time saved from being airlifted to Brisbane is going to be massive if you’ve got a blockage: the less time it takes to remove it the less damage to the brain.”
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A record $345,000 was raised via this year’s Giving Day, to help fund new equipment for stroke and breast cancer patients in the Sunshine Coast and Gympie regions.
Sunshine Coast Health medical director for rehabilitation Dr Elizabeth Grosso said one in four people will have a stroke in their lifetime.
“This new biplane equipment will save lives and improve the quality of life for stroke survivors,” she said.
“To us, it’s the biggest deal since antibiotics were invented.
“It’s completely going to transform stroke care worldwide.
“It will allow us to see a clot in the brain in 3D in real time.
“We can localise it, thread a catheter up through another blood vessel and get in there and suck the clot out.
“It allows the blood flow to be immediately restored to the brain and gives us the best chance of a really good outcome.
“We know we have about three hours before brain tissue starts to die.
“We have millions and millions of neurons dying every minute when that blood flow is obstructed, so we get really significant disability and a lot of impairments the more hours the clot is untreated.
“If we can restore that blood flow, in many cases you can just walk out of hospital the next day.”
The funds raised by Wishlist Giving Day will mean that, by the end of the year, patients will be able to get a clot removed on the Sunshine Coast rather than having to be transported to Brisbane.
The money raised will also help purchase Sentimag and Faxitron machines.
Nambour Hospital breast surgeon Dr Rod McMurray said they will improve treatment of breast cancer patients.
“The Sentimag platform is a really high-tech piece of equipment which allows us to find breast cancers deep within the breast tissue that we can’t see or feel,” he said.
“As a surgeon, it’s really important that we accurately remove the breast tissue that’s involved with the cancer whilst preserving the normal tissue around it.
“By placing a stainless-steel seat in the days or weeks before surgery, we can use a special magnetic probe at the time of surgery to adequately localize that tissue.
“Once the tissue has been excised at the patient’s bedside, we can do an x-ray using the Faxitron HD system.
“That way, we can then look at the margins of the tissue and see if we need to take any more excisions at that time.
“The combination of these two technologies really increases the efficiency of our procedures and offers a more accurate, patient-centred approach to breast cancer care.”
