Stroke Patients in the Rhondda

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:56 pm on 11 June 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:56, 11 June 2019

I thank the Member for that. Any death from a stroke is deeply regrettable. I'm not familiar with the case that she mentioned, but in the terms that she described it, of course our sympathy goes to his family in those circumstances. Thrombectomy is a highly specialised and relatively new form of intervention in the health service. It was partly developed here in Wales, because the original research that went into it was carried out in three centres—in Cardiff, in Birmingham and in one other. And when I was the health Minister, I had the privilege of meeting the clinician in Wales who was leading on that research here, and I met with a patient who had been an artist before suffering from his stroke, who described to me that, as the blood clot was drawn out of his brain—and he was watching it on a screen; he was conscious while this was happening—he could see the blood clot being removed from his brain and, as he was watching it, he could feel feeling coming back into his arm and to his hand. It was absolutely astonishing to hear that, but as you can imagine, as Members can imagine, the skill that is needed to carry out that sort of intervention is very significant and has to be enormously precise. 

So, the Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee are well advanced in planning a Wales-wide service for thrombectomy here in Wales. It will require recruitment. It will require training. In the meantime, we are commissioning services from across our border where scarce spare capacity exists. But the answer, not in the long term but as soon as we can do it, is to create that all-Wales service with the people that we will need and with the coverage that will be required.