JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Someone in the U.S. has a stroke every 50 seconds, and a 45-year-old Jacksonville woman who joined that fray is lucky to be alive.
Janet Bosman had a large clot but was recently given early surgical intervention that helped save her life.
"I should not be alive right now," Bosman said.
The Mandarin mother is a surviving stroke patient thanks to Baptist Medical Center.
"Dr. (Ricardo) Hanel, he came and checked on me several times and said, 'You're going to be OK. You'll be fine. It's going to just take a little while.' And sure enough the next evening I was able to speak," Bosman said.
Doctors are calling her treatment a major breakthrough and the best thing to happen for patients with acute stroke in the last 20 years.
Results of a new international study announced recently in Turkey support endovascular intervention, which is when doctors go through the groin to get to the clot to suction it out, in addition to giving patients the medication to break up the clot.
"If you have a little clog in your home pipes you use Drano, something like that will work. But if it's a big one, you call the plumber and they use the snake or something," said Dr. Eric Sauvageau, director of the Stroke and Cerebrovascular Center at Baptist. "It's exactly the same thing."
That's what doctors did for Bosman. Because too much time passed, doctors wouldn't have had the same success with just using medication to break up the clot.
Doctors at Baptist have been doing this treatment since March. Bosman had her stroke in June.
Bosman and her family are grateful for the results from the procedure.
"When you see that reaction from her husband and her daughter, that's what gives us the emotional energy to go every day and do what we do," said Hanel, a neurovascular surgeon.
Doctors said this treatment will help people regain functionality and live an independent life after a massive stroke.