Background. Previous reports have shown significant delays in treatment of in-hospital stroke (IHS). We developed and implemented our IHS alert protocol in April 2014. We aimed to determine the influence of implementation of our IHS alert protocol.
Methods: Our implementation processes comprise the following four main steps: IHS protocol development, workshops for hospital staff to learn about the protocol, preparation of standardized IHS treatment kits, and obtaining feedback in a monthly hospital staff conference. We retrospectively compared protocol metrics and clinical outcomes of patients with IHS treated with intravenous thrombolysis and/or endovascular therapy between before (January 2008 March 2014) and after implementation (April 2014 December 2016).
Results: Fifty-five patients were included (pre, 25; post, 30). After the implementation, significant reductions occurred in the median time from stroke recognition to evaluation by a neurologist (30 vs. 13.5 min, p < 0.01) and to first neuroimaging (50 vs. 26.5 min, p < 0.01) and in the median time from first neuroimaging to intravenous thrombolysis (45 vs. 16 min, p = 0.02). The median time from first neuroimaging to endovascular therapy had a tendency to decrease (75 vs. 53 min, p = 0.08). There were no differences in the favorable outcomes (modified Rankin scale score of 0-2) at discharge or the incidence of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage between the two periods.
Conclusion: Our IHS alert protocol implementation saved time in treating patients with IHS without compromising safety.