Athens' St. Mary's Hospital has received it's 8th consecutive Gold Plus Award for stroke care.
The hospital has also been named to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Honor Roll for the 6th year in a row for meeting measures designed to reduce "door-to-needle" time for administering clot-blocking drugs to ischemic stroke patients.
"That's very important to people who are coming to St. Mary's with an ischemic stroke, which means there's a blood clot actually blocking an artery in their brain," Ralston said.
He says that circumstance can result in devastating injury in a relatively short amount of time.
"Every minute about two million brain cells die, so the faster we can get that clot-buster administered, the more brain tissue we can save."
