Saturday, July 14, 2012

Ontario ERs missing 1 in 10 stroke patients: study


So every single ER department in Ontario should be looking at newer ways to diagnose a stroke. Maybe one of these?
Like the MindReader headset or urine testing or brain oximeter or Ischiban headband or the hand-held brain bleed detector
A 10% failure rate is pretty bad. If you know your hospital administrator ask them what they are doing to solve the problem. It is up to us to force better response rates, no one else seems to care.

 http://metronews.ca/news/canada/295839/ontario-ers-missing-1-in-10-stroke-patients-study/
He was stunned to learn a couple days later, after having an MRI, that he had suffered a stroke, albeit a small one.
But given the findings of a new Ontario study, it’s not all that surprising that Bruce’s stroke was missed in the ER.
One in 10 Ontario stroke patients seen in a hospital emergency department between 2006 and 2010 was documented as having had a stroke only after being admitted to a hospital ward, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
The finding is important because time is of the essence in treating stroke patients, said Dr. Paul Ellis, an emergency physician at the University Health Network. Suspected stroke patients should receive brain scans within one hour of arrival to the ER to identify the type of stroke and appropriate treatment.
“From an emergency standpoint, we need to be more diligent about what the potential signs and symptoms are,” Ellis said.
While overall stroke treatment is improving in Ontario, the CIHI study found that for those one in 10 patients not diagnosed in the ER, there was no mention of stroke or stroke symptoms in their ER records.

3 comments:

  1. thanks for this, surely this is a great help

    Registered Nurse Salary in Maine

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  2. Our healthcare system is flawed but this socialized medicine is disastrous.

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  3. But at least we would have some ability to make it better. The current profit run system doesn't care about people, its cheaper and more profitable to not diagnose them corectly and send them home.

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