If "time is brain," then patients with ischemic stroke should get to the emergency department by ambulance rather than private vehicle, one study suggested.
Arrival times of 3 hours or less were more likely in an ambulance than in a private vehicle ..., according to Sheryl Martin-Schild, MD, PhD, of Tulane University in New Orleans, and colleagues.If you read the entire article, you'll see that ambulance patients are more likely to show up within three hours of stroke onset, which means better chances with the only current treatment available for clot-type strokes.
The final outcomes at discharge, interestingly, of both ambulance-driven and private transportation patients are about the same. However, it's also the case that generally more severe stroke patients arrive by ambulance, while the generally less severe arrive by private transportation. So the ambulance-arriving patients generally start out worse but wind up about the same.
The takeaway on this - know stroke signs, and if you think someone is having a stroke, call an ambulance!
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