Life-saving procedure offered at UMC for stroke patients

One El Paso woman is counting her blessings this holiday season after suffering from a stroke.

An experience that came as a shock to her and her husband, but both are thankful for a procedure that saved her life.

It was only 3-months ago when Maria Dominguez suffered a serious stroke. Although she feels better now, Maria still gets nervous whenever she feels a headache coming on.

“My wife had never complained or had any issues with headaches,” said Frank Dominguez, Maria’s husband.

One night as Frank and Maria were getting ready for bed, Frank noticed something was wrong with his wife after she complained about a very bad headache.

“Within seconds she was on the floor. She collapsed,” said Frank.

Maria was suffering from a hemorrhagic stroke. Something can can happen suddenly according to Carla Escobar, stroke monitoring unit manager at University Medical Center.

Escobar says that billions of brain cells begin dying directly in your brain when a blood clot ruptures, so you need to call 9-1-1 immediately. Something Frank was thankful he did.

“Right away they took her, Maria, to get a CT scan and discovered it was a hemorrhage. It was an aneurysm. They took action and did a procedure which thank god everything came out good.”

That procedure was an embolization.

“So what we do here at umc is an embolization procedure where we go in through the groin and go all the way up to where we see that leaking happen and we stop that leak. We coil that aneurysm to where it won’t have any further blood loss from that area,” explained Escobar.

The procedure is actually a minimally invasive surgery.

Frank is thankful that the procedure was a success for his wife, because, he says, it saved her life.

For more information on the Certified Comprehensive Stroke Center at UMC CLICK HERE.