Monitoring after a stroke
New PTB measuring instrument simplifies the monitoring of stroke patients
Strokes are the second most common cause of death in the industrial nations. One third of the survivors must accept serious, permanent disabilities. In Germany alone, approximately a quarter of a million people suffer a stroke every year. Both the personal effects and the economic follow-up costs are enormous. The faster the patients can be brought into a suitable hospital with a special stroke ward, the better is their prognosis. In the first hours and days, the patients should be observed as permanently as possible. A new compact, mobile measuring instrument which has been developed by scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) together with cooperation partners can now be used directly at the bedside and allows a simpler and more frequent measurement of the blood flow. This allows the patients to be monitored for the first time directly in an intensive care unit. The measurement procedure could optimally complement the measurements at stroke units.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Rainer Macdonald, PTB Department 8.3 Biomedical Optics,
phone: +49 (0) 30 3481-7542,
e-mail: rainer.macdonald(at)ptb.de
Dr. Oliver Steinkellner, PTB Working Group 8.31 Tissue Optics and Molecular Imaging,
phone: +49 (0) 30 3481-7603,
e-mail: oliver.steinkellner(at)ptb.de
Latest scientific publication
Steinkellner, O.; Gruber, C.; Wabnitz, H.; Jelzow, A.; Steinbrink, J.; Fiebach, J. B.; Macdonald, R.; Obrig, H.: Optical Bedside Monitoring of Cerebral Perfusion: Technological and Methodological Advances Applied in a Study on Acute Ischemic Stroke. J. Biomed. Opt. 15. In print.