On Friday November 21, University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht will open a unit especially for babies who have had strokes. UMC Utrecht hopes to be able to identify such children more effectively and provide better treatment once stroke has been diagnosed.
This “neonatal stroke unit” will improve diagnostic procedures and treatment for newborns that have had strokes. Strokes can lead to severe handicaps later in life. Early detection and treatment with physical therapy improves the chances of successful long-term outcomes. Moreover, if the stroke has a genetic cause, doctors can suggest genetic counseling if parents want to have more children. Every year, UMC Utrecht expects to admit around twenty-five children with stroke.
The special unit brings together the expertise required to diagnose and treat these children. For example, nurses receive special training to be able to recognize epileptic seizures in babies, which often signal a stroke. Nurses play a key role in their early detection. “With this unit, we hope to enhance the care of these newborns,” says professor of neonatal neurology Linda de Vries.
According to neonatologists at UMC Utrecht, strokes in babies occur more often than the predicted 1 out of every 4,000 births. One of the reasons for this is that there are now better methods for detecting stroke. Doctors increasingly use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to look at the brains of infants.
The neonatal stroke unit at UMC Utrecht was set up by Professor Linda de Vries, Dr. Floris Groenendaal, and Professor Frank van Bel. They all work in the Department of Neonatology at Wilhelmina Children's Hospital, part of UMC Utrecht. To mark the official opening of the unit, UMC Utrecht is organizing an international
symposium on Friday November 21. For more information, please visit the UMC Utrecht
website.