Thursday, December 10, 2015

One more way to potentially speed treatment

Speed, as you know, is key in treating stroke patients.

Recent news about telemedicine shortening door-to-needle time:
A mobile stroke treatment unit (MSTU) operated by Cleveland Clinic which uses telemedicine to connect emergency team members to a hospital-based vascular neurologist, reduced time to tPA treatment by more than 25 minutes in an analysis of the first 100 patients transported. ...
When the 100 MSTU patients were compared with 56 patients matched for age and stroke severity who were evaluated at hospital emergency departments, median door to CT completion time, door to international normalized ratio result time, and time to IV tPA administration were found to be shorter in the MSTU group:
  • Time from door to CT completion was 13 minutes in the MSTU group (IQR 9-21 minutes) and 18 minutes in the ED group (IQR 12-26 minutes)
  • Time from door to IV thrombolysis was 32 minutes in the MSTU group (IQR 24-47 minutes) and 58 minutes in the ED group (IQR 53-68 minutes)
  • Time to CT interpretation did not differ significantly between the two groups

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