Treatment at UPMC
To schedule an appointment with a specialist from any of the UPMC facilities listed below, please call 1-800-533-UPMC (8762).
UPMC Stroke Institute
The UPMC Stroke Institute is dedicated to the treatment and prevention of stroke. At the institute, UPMC doctors with a wide variety of specialties join together to offer the very latest techniques of stroke diagnosis and treatment. Multispecialty care enables institute physicians to treat stroke patients and patients at risk of stroke who also suffer from heart disease, diabetes, and other serious illnesses. Institute physicians also participate in clinical studies of new stroke treatments that promise to limit or prevent stroke disability.
UPMC Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (IRR)
When a stroke's effects are severe, patients may benefit from rehabilitation therapy. Rehabilitation treatment ranges from intense therapy in the hospital to outpatient rehabilitation (including spasticity, speech therapy, and physical therapy) and assistive devices. UPMC's IRR offers a continuum of care that provides the right treatment at the right time.
Stroke and Neurological Program
To help people recover and function at the highest possible level, the UPMC Division of Neurology developed the Stroke and Neurological Disorders Program. The program treats patients with neurologic disabilities resulting from ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, Parkinson's disease, movement disorders, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), and peripheral neuropathy.
UPMC Stroke Network
As part of the UPMC Stroke Institute's mission to improve stroke treatment, UPMC stroke specialists, UPMC and non-UPMC community hospitals, and local emergency medical services have joined to create a regional stroke network called the UPMC Stroke Network. As part of this initiative, UPMC specialists are helping to train ambulance crews to better recognize and treat stroke. The specialists are available 24 hours a day to offer professional advice to doctors in local hospitals. In addition, UPMC Stroke Network specialists are providing doctors at network-affiliated hospitals with the training and materials necessary to participate in studies of investigational anti-stroke drugs. As a result, many stroke patients can receive advanced treatment without leaving their communities.
Why Choose UPMC?
UPMC neurologists and neurosurgeons have been among the national leaders in stroke therapy. They can often offer UPMC patients advanced or investigational stroke therapies not available at other stroke treatment centers:
Intra-arterial thrombolytic treatment uses a long tube threaded through a blood vessel and into the brain to deliver thrombolytic drugs such as tPA at the site of a blood clot causing a stroke. Because this method delivers a relatively high dose directly to the clot, it may be more effective and cause fewer side effects than delivery of thrombolytics to the whole body via a vein.
Stroke neurosurgery concentrates on surgically bypassing and opening blocked vessels threatening the brain, as well as controlling bleeding in some types of hemorrhagic strokes.
Neuroprotective drugs, while not often available at most stroke treatment centers, are the subject of several clinical studies at UPMC. These investigational agents may be able to protect surrounding healthy tissues from further damage from a stroke.
Neural implantation for stroke, a revolutionary new investigational therapy that was first performed at UPMC, uses minimally invasive surgery to place engineered nerve cells in stroke-damaged areas of the brain. UPMC studies of neural implantation have provided the first preliminary evidence that implanted cells can grow and take the place of nerve cells killed by a stroke.