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Visor Helps Quickly Diagnose Strokes

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Sixty-seven-year-old Oliver Peart is getting back to his routine after a major health scare.

"I think I made a full recovery," Peart said.

As CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez reported, Peart was at work eight months ago when suddenly he couldn't move the left side of his body. He was rushed to the emergency room, where doctors used a portable, wireless visor to determine that he suffered a severe stroke. The Cerebrotech Visor transmits low-power radio waves through the brain looking for differences in fluid volume between the brain's hemispheres. It takes just 30 seconds to analyze the information.

"The big thing about a stroke is there's a symmetry when one of the arteries feeding one side of the brain is blocked compared to the other side, so we can detect that with this visor," said Dr. Christopher Kellner, director of the intracerebral hemorrhage program At Mount Sinai Hospital.

Cerebrotech Visor
The Cerebrotech Visor can quickly diagnose strokes, improving the chances of recovery. (credit: CBS2)

Kellner said the goal of the visor technology is to help quickly identify patients who have had a stroke so they can receive immediate treatment.

"Time is brain," he said. "As someone's having a stroke, they're losing many, many neurons every second. And so anytime we can decrease from that is very important."

The only FDA-approved treatment for a so-called ischemic stroke, in which a blood clot blocks a brain artery, is a clot-buster drug callled TPA. But that has to be given within 3 hours of stroke onset, and often a stroke patient doesn't get to the hospital until much of that time has elapsed. That makes fast diagnosis with something like Cerebrotech so important.

Peart said he's grateful he was treated at an ER testing the new technology.

"The type of stroke that I had, a lot of times the patient doesn't survive," he said. "So, you know, I'm lucky."

He said the only lingering side effect is some vision loss in his left eye.

The Cerebrotech manufacturer is also developing software to help the visor diagnose brain swelling, traumatic brain injury, concussion, hydrocephalus and even brain tumors.

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