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Advanced stroke procedure delivers critical treatment to St. Louis letter carrier
“I told my wife we aren’t moving. If I’d gone elsewhere for treatment, I wouldn’t be here.”
— Mark Bosso
“Most people don’t survive what I had.” St. Louis letter carrier Mark Bosso was home recovering from heart surgery when, suddenly, he stopped talking.
"His face fell and one of his eyes drifted to the far side,” recalls his wife, Diana. “I knew he was having a stroke.
"Rushed to St. Anthony’s, Bosso was diagnosed with a large blood clot in his brain. Doctors first thought about using tPA, a highly effective clot-busting drug typically injected into a vein, but Bosso’s recent heart surgery made that procedure risky. Suddenly, Bosso’s condition deteriorated rapidly and doctors immediately started a more advanced procedure — snaking a catheter through an artery from Bosso’s groin to his brain and injecting tPA directly into the clot itself.
"The medication is delivered full-strength right at the site of the clot,” says Mazen AbuAwad, MD, a St. Anthony’s interventional radiologist. "Patients receive the maximum dosage in the shortest amount of time, and the drug continues to work even as the clot is broken down into smaller pieces and dissolved.”
St. Anthony’s is one of only three hospitals in the region that offers the intra-arterial, clot-busting procedure.
“Doctors told me they could see his eye move back even while they were breaking up the clot,” says Diana. “It was simply amazing.”
Discharged from the hospital in just seven days, Bosso was back to work within three months, with only minimal lingering effects. Today, he carries two leather pouches full of mail on his shoulders six hours a day for home deliveries in south St. Louis. “I surprised even my colleagues when I came back to work,” he says. “I told my wife we aren’t moving. If I’d gone elsewhere for treatment, I wouldn’t be here.”
For information or a physician referral, please call 800-554-9550 or visit our online physician referral.
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