I hate this style of chest thumping congratulations. Nothing in here ever says that improved outcomes objectively resulted from faster access to tPA. They only say that 'Golden-hour thrombolysis was associated with better short-term outcomes'. They never mention that tPA has only a 12% efficacy rate.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/Strokes/48735
Treating acute ischemic stroke patients in a stroke emergency mobile
unit (STEMO) boosted the percentage of patients who received
thrombolysis within the "golden hour," according to a German study.
Nearly
one-third of (32.6%) ischemic stroke patients who were transported in
the special ambulance received thrombolysis, compared with 22% of
patients who received conventional care (P<0.001), reported researcher Martin Ebinger, MD, of the Charite-Universitatsmedizin in Berlin, and colleagues.
Hospital
transport in the STEMO increased the number of tissue plasminogen
activator (tPA) treatments within the critical window of 1 hour (the
"golden hour") from symptom onset almost 10-fold, they wrote online in JAMA Neurology.
Golden-hour thrombolysis was associated with better short-term outcomes in the study population, they added.
STEMO
is a specialized ambulance equipped with a CT scanner and a
point-of-care lab, and staffed with a neurologist trained in emergency
medicine, along with a paramedic, and a radiology technician. A
neuroradiologist is on call to evaluate images acquired on board the
STEMO via a teleradiology connection, the authors explained.
"The
STEMO was deployed when the dispatchers suspected an acute stroke during
emergency calls," they wrote. "If STEMO was not available (during
control weeks, while the unit was in operation, or during maintenance),
patients received conventional care."
STEMO in the U.S.
"The
concept of pre-hospital thrombolysis is still relatively new, and
experience is limited to few groups," the researchers wrote, adding that
further improvements in time reduction for early tPA treatment can be
expected with growing use.
The findings show that tPA treatment
times can be significantly lowered with specially equipped and staffed
ambulances, but the concept is still highly experimental and many
questions remain, commented Steven Warach, MD, PhD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Austin.
"We are at the very beginning of figuring out how this is going to be of benefit, but we will figure it out," Warach told MedPage Today. He added that it remains to be seen if mobile stroke units would be most beneficial in rural or urban settings.
The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston began operating the first mobile stroke unit in May 2014. The center's James C. Grotta, MD, and colleagues are currently studying the feasibility, efficacy, and cost effectiveness of the ambulance-treatment strategy.
The
Houston STEMO unit, which is often staffed by Grotta, has treated about
two patients a week with about a 40% golden hour tPA treatment rate, he
said.
"Obviously, this is very preliminary data," he told MedPage Today.
"At this point we are conducting a demonstration project and the
cost-benefit analysis will be critical if this strategy is going to be
widely adopted."
He added that data on the Houston project, to be published next month in Archives of Neurology, will include some early cost-analysis data.
Study Details
Despite
efforts to reduce the time to tPA treatment for stroke, the vast
majority of patients are not treated in the optimal golden hour after
the onset of stroke symptoms, and a large percentage of eligible
patients still receive no thrombolytic therapy.
In the Safe
Implementation of Thrombolysis-Stroke Monitoring Study (SITS-MOST)
registry, 10.6% of 6,483 patients were treated within 90 minutes and
only 1.4% within 60 minutes. The median symptom onset to treatment (OTT)
in the SITS-International Stroke Thrombolysis Register was 145 minutes,
the researchers noted.
"Structured approaches have been
successful in increasing thrombolysis rates and shortening
door-to-needle times," Ebinger and colleagues wrote. "Centers with
greater numbers of tPA treatments per year tend to have shorter
door-to-needle times compared with smaller centers. However, some of the
centers with shortened door-to-needle times still have long
pre-hospital times."
In an earlier analysis of the Berlin program,
Ebinger and colleagues showed that the STEMO unit approach could
shorten treatment times for stroke patients. In their latest analysis,
the researchers examined the impact on STEMO on golden-hour thrombolysis
and outcomes.
The prospective, controlled Prehospital Acute
Neurological Treatment and Optimization of Medical Care in Stroke
(PHANTOM-S) study included 6,182 consecutive adult patients with
probable stroke delivered to a Berlin hospital by STEMO or regular
ambulance between May 2011 and January 2013.
Thrombolysis was started in STEMO if a stroke was confirmed and no contraindication was found.
The
main outcome for the analysis was rate of golden hour thrombolysis, 7-
and 90-day mortality, secondary intracerebral hemorrhage, and discharge
home.
Thrombolysis rates in ischemic stroke were 200 of 614
patients when STEMO was deployed and 330 of 1,497 patients when
conventional care was administered. Among all patients who received
thrombolysis, the proportion of golden hour thrombolysis was six-fold
higher after STEMO deployment (31% versus 4.9%, P<0.01).
The median OTT was 50 minutes in golden hour thrombolysis versus 105 minutes in all other thrombolysis (P<0.001).
In patients who received golden hour thrombolysis, median NIHSS score
was higher than in patients who received tPA more than 60 minutes after
symptom onset.
Compared with patients with a longer time from
symptom onset to treatment, patients who received golden hour
thrombolysis had no higher risks for 7- or 90-day mortality (adjusted
odds ratios 0.38, 95% CI 0.09-1.70, P=0.21 and aOR 0.69, 95% CI 0.32-1.53, P=0.36). They also were more likely to be discharged home (aOR 1.93, 95% CI 1.09-3.41, P=0.02).
Mobile Stroke Unit 'Here to Stay'
In
an accompanying editorial, Warach wrote that the Berlin study showed
that STEMO can significantly shorten time to thrombolytic treatment,
which should translate into clinical benefit.
"Let there also be
no doubt that the mobile stroke unit is here to stay and is starting to
disseminate into pre-hospital stroke care," he wrote. "Many questions
need to be answered in order to determine the appropriate niche where
the benefit justifies the intensive use of resources that this approach
requires. It is the duty of the early adopters to resist the temptation
to uncritically embrace this approach as a certain good and to address
these issues through rigorous clinical investigations."
Warach told MedPage Today that
the Berlin and Houston experiences should help answer important
questions about the efficacy and cost of stroke-dedicated emergency
response units and he applauded both groups' efforts.
One
important question which the Houston researchers are examining is
whether trained neurologists need to be physically present in the STEMO
unit if telemedicine technology is available.
Grotta said their early experience suggests that similar outcomes can be achieved using telemedicine.
"There
are situations where telemedicine may not be as accurate or feasible as
having a neurologist on site," he said. "Having done it for several
months, I can say telemedicine seems to be working, but it is not a slam
dunk."
Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 28,987 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke.DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER, BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.
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