Patients presenting with catastrophic stroke in regional areas can now be treated within minutes thanks to a new medical service called telestroke.
Stroke is a brain disease that kills 23 Australians each day – and time is critical.
The program is expanding in most Australian states, who have rolled out their own telestroke networks, but Queensland is yet to set up the service.
Former surveyor Mark Asper lives at Greenwell Point on the New South Wales south coast. When he had a stroke late last year he was treated remotely by a doctor 250 kilometres away who diagnosed his stroke and prescribed a clot-busting drug.
"Someone in a regional area, such as myself, probably did receive faster treatment than someone who lives in the metropolitan," Mr Asper told 7.30.
"One day I was going along … [then] flat on my back in the hospital being told that I've had a stroke.
"Your world changes. Everything changes."
Mr Asper credits his successful recovery to the telestroke program and his wife's ability to diagnose him with the FAST method.
His wife Anne Simpson knew immediately her husband was having a stroke because of her marine rescue training.
"It's one of the scarier moments I've ever had in my life," Ms Simpson said.
'An incredible technological feat'
Since it was launched in NSW in 2020, the telestroke service has treated almost 2,000 patients.
Professor Ken Butcher at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney is spearheading the program, which puts a stroke specialist in the emergency department of a regional hospital via video link.
"It's a way of essentially trying to deliver the same level of care to patients in those areas where they traditionally been deprived of access to that level of care," he said.
"Using high-definition video and audio … I'm able to assess a patient, I can talk to them, I can talk to their caregivers who are with them, at the time of the stroke in the emergency department.
"It still is an incredible technological feat that I can actually look inside a patient's cranium while they're actually having a stroke and tell you what type of stroke they're having."
The program is due to be active at 23 hospitals in NSW by June this year, with plans to expand further with a stroke ambulance.
The majority of other states and territories have their own telestroke programs, but Stroke Foundation CEO Sharon McGowan says Queensland is lagging behind.
"If you live in far north Queensland, your chance of getting access to emergency stroke treatment is much reduced," she said.
"We're calling particularly on the Queensland government to invest in telestroke."
In a statement to the ABC, a spokesperson for Queensland Health said the "incorporation of a telestroke service is currently being considered".
They said high quality support is provided to "regional and remote hospitals through established hub and spoke models of care".
'No medical intervention here at all'
Rishana Smith, the wife of stroke survivor Graham Smith, says missing out on timely treatment due to living in regional Australia can have lifelong consequences.
Mr Smith had a stroke over a decade ago in Nanango, a rural town in south-east Queensland, and his wife is now his full-time carer.
He suffered significant brain damage and lives with constant seizures, causing speech difficulties.
"There was no medical intervention here at all," Ms Smith told 7.30.
The pair waited more than three hours for a locum to arrive at the local hospital and another three hours for a helicopter to arrive.
"By that stage it was too late for any intervention to try and stop the clotting in his brain."
Ms Smith says she is constantly in fear that her husband will have another major stroke.
"[We] definitely need something like the telestroke because it comes down to minutes at the end of the day."
Watch this 7.30 story on ABC iview.
