Are hospital patients with stroke 'hiding in plain sight?'

Designed by Freepik.com

We're all told: Time is brain. And in a recent posting, even the newly developed tools to battle strokes work better when there's no delay.

So, it's a little distressing to find that time is still a problem - for patients who are already in a hospital. Even delays in imaging to determine best treatment. You'd think if the patient was already in the hospital, that would not be a problem.

But it is.

Read about recent research showing that imaging is delayed when a stroke strikes within a hospital:

"Delays in the recognition and treatment of strokes occurring during hospitalization are common, and in-hospital strokes tend to be more severe and have worse outcomes than strokes occurring among those who are not hospitalized, researchers reported.

Compared with community-onset strokes, patients with in-hospital strokes generally waited longer for neuroimaging ...  and received thrombolysis less often ... , researcher Moria K. Kapral, MD, of Toronto General Hospital, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues wrote in JAMA Neurology, published online May 4. There was also a greater delay between stroke recognition and thrombolysis ... , but after adjustment for relevant factors such as age and stroke severity, mortality rates at 30 days and 1 year were similar between the two groups.

You'd think, though, that people in the hospital would do better, considering they are minutes away from experts and treatment. And check out the "hiding in plain sight" quote:

In an editorial published with the study, Douglas A. Dulli, MD, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, Madison, wrote that the findings "reveal a paradox in which a critical therapy is limited or delayed in a group of patients whose need for it may be greater." ...

"The authors confirm that evolution must continue in the use of code stroke, not only for patients with stroke discovered at the hospital door but also for those within and hiding in plain sight," Dulli wrote.