By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Nov. 21, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Stroke outcomes are better when patients are treated in an ambulance by a neurologist equipped with a CT scanner and clot-busting drugs, German researchers report.
The sooner patients get the clot dissolver -- tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) -- the better the outcome after a stroke, the researchers noted. For the best outcome, the drug needs to be given within the first hour after stroke symptoms start, the researchers said.
"The so-called 'golden hour' is associated with improved patient outcomes in terms of hospital discharge," said lead researcher Dr. Martin Ebinger, from the Center for Stroke Research at Charite-Universitatsmedizin in Berlin.
"Our findings emphasize the importance of fast treatment in acute stroke," he said. Giving clot-busting drugs in a stroke emergency mobile unit (STEMO) substantially increases the number of stroke patients who get that care in the golden hour, Ebinger said.
For the study, Ebinger and his colleagues looked at how fast clot-busting drugs could be given before patients got to the hospital and how well they did afterwards.
Specifically, they looked at slightly more than 3,000 patients with a suspected stroke treated in a STEMO between May 2011 and January 2013, and compared them with almost 3,000 similar patients when STEMO wasn't available.
Of the 614 patients who suffered a stroke when a STEMO unit was available, 32.6 percent got tPA in the ambulance. Among the 330 stroke patients seen when the special ambulance was not available, 22 percent were given the drug once they got to the hospital.
Patients treated in the STEMO unit got tPA 24.5 minutes sooner than patients given the drug in the hospital. The number given tPA within the golden hour was six times higher with STEMO, according to the report published online Nov. 17 in the journal JAMA Neurology.
Moreover, patients treated with STEMO had no increase in death in the week or three months after their stroke, and they were able to leave the hospital sooner than patients given tPA in the hospital, the researchers found.
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Special Ambulance Delivers Vital Stroke Care More Quickly