Deans' stroke musings: Smart Brain-Wave Cap Recognises Stroke Before the Patient Reaches the Hospital

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.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, October 20, 2023

Smart Brain-Wave Cap Recognises Stroke Before the Patient Reaches the Hospital

Well, wasn't this known about 6 years ago and now you're finally getting around to using it? WHAT MASSIVE INCOMPETENCE THERE IS IN STROKE!

Hats off to Helmet of Hope - stroke diagnosis in 30 seconds; February 2017

The latest here:

Smart Brain-Wave Cap Recognises Stroke Before the Patient Reaches the Hospital

A special brain-wave cap can diagnose stroke in the ambulance, allowing the patient to receive appropriate treatment faster, according to a study published in the journal Neurology.

“Our research shows that the brain-wave cap can recognise patients with large ischaemic stroke with great accuracy,”

said Jonathan Coutinhom, MD, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. “This is very good news, because the cap can ultimately save lives by routing these patients directly to the right hospital.”

The brain-wave cap allows a dry electrode electroencephalography (EEG) to be carried out in the ambulance. This brain wave test shows whether there is an ischaemic stroke or an anterior large vessel occlusion stroke.

“When it comes to stroke, time is literally the brain,” said Dr. Coutinho. “The sooner we start the right treatment, the better the outcome. If the diagnosis is already clear in the ambulance, the patient can be routed directly to the right hospital, which saves valuable time.”

The smart brain-wave cap was tested in 12 Dutch ambulances. Adult patients were eligible if they had suspected stroke (as assessed by the attending paramedic), and symptom onset <24 hours. A single dry electrode EEG recording (8 electrodes) was performed by the paramedic.

Between August 2020 and September 2022, 311 patients were included. Median EEG duration time was 151 seconds. For 212 (68%) patients, EEG data were of sufficient quality for analysis.

Six (3%) patients had an anterior large vessel occlusion stroke, 109 (51%) a non-large vessel occlusion ischaemic stroke, 32 (15%) a transient ischaemic attack, 8 (4%) a hemorrhagic stroke, and 57 (27%) a stroke mimic.

The primary endpoint was the diagnostic accuracy of the theta/alpha frequency ratio for LVO-a stroke (intracranial ICA, A1, M1 or proximal M2 occlusion) among patients with EEG data of sufficient quality, expressed as the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The AUC for the theta/alpha ratio was 0.80.

“The data from this study suggest that dry electrode EEG has potential to detect an anterior large vessel occlusion stroke among patients with suspected stroke in the prehospital setting,” the authors wrote. “Towards future implementation of EEG in prehospital stroke care, EEG data quality needs to be improved.”

Reference: https://n.neurology.org/content/early/2023/10/17/WNL.0000000000207831

SOURCE: Amsterdam University Medical Centers