FATHER-OF-FOUR Mike Nind owes his life to being at the right place at the right time after suffering a massive stroke.

The attack was severe enough to give him just a 20 per cent chance of surviving.

Yet unknown to the 52-year-old, he was on his way to one of just five hospitals in Britain offering a new way to treat strokes.

Now, just a week later, he is being discharged from the University Hospital of North Staffordshire showing hardly any signs of his brush with death.

Mike, from Hanchurch, is only the fourth stroke patient at the Hartshill complex to undergo the breakthrough procedure which allows doctors to get drugs to the brain clot causing the stroke quicker and more accurately than ever.

Only around 20 of the 900 stroke victims treated at the hospital a year can benefit from the pioneering care, but specialists say all four to go through the system would have died, or be left with appalling disabilities without it.

All that was lost on father-of-four Mike as an ambulance brought him to the accident unit after suffering the stroke at 9am last Monday.

By 3pm he was in an operating theatre having the procedure and four hours later on the stroke unit starting his dramatic recovery.

He said: "From the look of the old buildings where I was being taken to, I thought the place was a bit of a hole so I asked the doctors if I could be moved to a proper stroke centre.

"They replied I was already in the best in Britain and although I would probably die my only hope was this new technique they asked for consent to try on me.

"I wasn't in too much pain so hearing that was a real hammer blow that will never leave me.

"Without having such advanced treatment I know I would be dead by now."

Three stroke physicians, two radiologists and a nurse consultant are trained to perform the procedure, which until now was available only in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Newcastle upon Tyne.

Recovery is quicker because now the hospital has a specialised stroke centre, the therapists needed to restore mobility, speech and other functions can be concentrated in the same location.

Consultant stroke physician Dr Indira Natarajan said: "This is a quicker and more accurate treatment than we have been able to offer before and although only a small number of patients fit the criteria, it is saving their lives.

"We are proud this hospital has joined an elite number of centres able to do this.

"For it to be effective, patients need to recognise straight away they are having a stroke, the ambulance must get them here quickly and scans have to be done promptly."

Nurse consultant Fiona Lunn added: "It is exciting to be working in such cutting-edge medicine and it is so satisfying to know we are saving people from death or severe disability when they would have had no chance not so long ago."

Self-employed Mike, of Hanchurch Fields, whose telephone system business is in Newcastle, knew he was having a stroke because he had seen the recent high-profile advertising campaign on television.

He said: "I was on the phone at the time when my mouth and jaw started to move to the right on their own and so I called 999.

"We are not used to having the best there is in Stoke-on-Trent, but I am so lucky that in this particular field there is nowhere better."