Advances in Stroke Advances in Critical Care/Emergency Medicine 2013

If these people would just think a little bit and realize that if you want to apply tPA faster you totally get away from a CT scan. Maybe with the tricorder possibly thru one of these 17 ways. But no, they go down the status quo route. Stupidity personified.
http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/45/2/359.extract?etoc

1. Emanuela Keller, MD;
2. Kyra J. Becker, MD

+ Author Affiliations

1. From the Neurocritical Care Unit, Department of Neurosurgery, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland (E.K.); and Departments of Neurology and Neurological Surgery, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle (K.B.).

1. Correspondence to Kyra J. Becker, MD, Box 359775 HMC, 325 9th Ave, Seattle, WA 98104-2499. E-mail kjb@uw.edu

Key Words:

• blood pressure
• cerebral hemorrhage
• hyperglycemia
• hypothermia

Introduction

Of the many publications in this field, the ones discussed hereunder seem to be most relevant for clinical practice.

Ischemic Stroke

Intravenous thrombolysis with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) is the only therapy proven to improve outcome in ischemic stroke. Studies of intravenous thrombolysis show that response to therapy is time-dependent; the sooner the patients receive tPA, the better the chance of good outcome.¹ The required brain imaging before tPA administration delays the initiation of therapy because it necessitates patient transport. In the Pre-Hospital Acute Neurological Treatment and Optimization of Medical Care in Stroke (PHANTOM-S) pilot study, Weber et al² attempt to speed up stroke treatment by administering tPA before hospital arrival. When patients with presumed stroke contacted the emergency medical system, a stroke emergency mobile unit equipped with a CT scanner was dispatched. Brain imaging was performed at the scene, enabling tPA administration in the stroke emergency mobile unit. For patients in stroke emergency mobile unit, the median time between emergency call and initiation of tPA was 58 minutes (5–63); this time was 92 minutes (79–112) in a group of historic controls. The PHANTOM-S study was a nonrandomized study performed in urban Germany. A randomized controlled study performed in a more rural region of Germany showed a similar relative decrease in the time to tPA treatment among patients treated in a CT-equipped mobile stroke unit compared with those treated in the emergency room.³ These studies show that CT-equipped mobile stroke units decrease the time to tPA administration, which could …

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