Thursday, June 25, 2015

Training stroke patients for the just-in-case scenario

Photo from Thomas Hawk via Flickr
Learning is generally a good thing.

Ever been hospitalized? If so, it's likely you went through a discharge process, received some instructions and signed some papers. In my experience, most instructions are semi-helpful at best. Now, here's an idea that might be an upgrade for in-hospital instructions - educating stroke survivors helps them spot another stroke faster:
Stroke survivors who receive extensive stroke education are much more likely to recognize symptoms of another stroke and seek immediate treatment, a new study shows. ...
Over five years of follow-up, 224 of the patients had another stroke or experienced stroke-like symptoms. Forty-two percent of those patients arrived at an emergency department within three hours.
Only 28 percent of patients in the study had gone to the ER within three hours when they had their first stroke or TIA. So, the stroke education led to a 49 percent improvement in the rate of people getting to the hospital quickly. Among Hispanics, there was a 63 percent increase, the researchers noted.
Now, there's still a lot of room for improvement in these numbers. But this might be a good start to help reduce death and disability due to strokes.

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