Stroke Patients Won't Leave Pasco Anymore: AdventHealth Wesley Chapel Opens Clot-Removal Suite Monday

Starting Monday, a Wesley Chapel stroke patient who needs a clot pulled out of the brain should no longer have to be driven out of Pasco County to get it. AdventHealth Wesley Chapel unveils its new biplane neurointerventional suite on Aug. 17 at its campus at 2600 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., giving doctors, first responders and community leaders a first look at the equipment that makes that possible.

The procedure at the center of it is mechanical thrombectomy. A specialist threads a thin catheter up through the patient's blood vessels, reaches the clot that is choking off blood flow to the brain, and removes it. No open surgery. It is used for certain severe ischemic strokes, and the sooner it happens, the better the odds of walking out without permanent disability.

Until now, some Pasco patients who needed that level of intervention had to be transferred to hospitals elsewhere. That meant more time on the clock and, for families, a drive to a city farther from home while someone they love was in a bed they could not sit beside. The hospital says the new suite, combined with newly added neurointerventional physicians, keeps those cases in Wesley Chapel.

Dr. Jason Maljaar, the hospital's medical director of neurology, put the stakes in the phrase stroke teams live by: time is brain. When blood flow to the brain is blocked, he said, brain cells start dying within minutes, and being able to intervene on campus means treatment starts faster and recovery goes better.

What the suite actually does

Biplane means two rotating cameras instead of one. They image the brain's blood vessels from multiple angles at the same time and build a three-dimensional view, which is how a physician steers a catheter through arteries the width of a pencil lead. AdventHealth says the setup also shortens procedure time.

Stroke is the headline use, but not the only one. The hospital plans to use the suite for brain aneurysms, diagnostic cerebral angiograms, and middle meningeal artery embolization, a minimally invasive treatment for certain patients with chronic subdural hematomas, which are collections of blood between the brain and its outer covering. Other emergency and elective neurovascular procedures will run through the same room.

AdventHealth did not disclose what the suite cost.

A step toward Comprehensive Stroke Center

AdventHealth Wesley Chapel is currently designated a Primary Stroke Center, the level that covers rapid diagnosis, imaging and clot-busting drug treatment. The hospital is pursuing Comprehensive Stroke Center designation, which is reserved for hospitals equipped to handle the most complex cases. The new suite and the added specialists are part of that push.

The volume behind all of this is not small. More than 80,000 Floridians were hospitalized because of strokes in 2023, according to the Florida Department of Health, and stroke remains one of the leading causes of death and long-term disability nationally. In a corner of Pasco where the population has grown fast and a large share of households include aging parents and grandparents, the difference between minutes and an out-of-county transfer is measured in the same units.

Monday's event is a first look for clinicians, EMS crews and community leaders, not a public open house. The hospital has not said when the first procedures will be performed in the suite, or when it expects a decision on the Comprehensive Stroke Center designation.

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