MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Perttu J. Lindsberg, MD, PhD Professor of Neurology Clinical Neurosciences and Molecular Neurology Research Programs Unit, Biomedicum Helsinki University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The past 20 years in shaping the Helsinki model in stroke thrombolysis have proven that we can be very fast in examining the patient, completing the imaging and starting thrombolytic therapy. This is a university hospital center that receives roughly three stroke suspects per day for evaluation of recanalization therapies. Already seven years ago we were able to push the median ’door-to-needle’ time permanently below 20 minutes. What we had not been monitoring was how well we had kept up the accuracy of our emergengy department (ED) diagnostic process. Prehospital emergency medical services (EMS) have been trained to focus on suspecting thrombolysis-eligible stroke and we usually get also pre-notifications of arriving stroke code patients during transportation, but the diagnosis on admission is an independent clinical judgment as the CT findings are largely nondiagnostic for acute changes. The admission evaluation of suspected acute stroke is therefore a decisive neurologic checkpoint, building the success of acute treatments such as recanalization therapy, but is complicated by differential diagnosis between true manifestations of stroke and numerous mimicking conditions. Although we have invested a lot on training and standardized ED procedures, time pressure and therapy-geared expectations may blur the diagnostic process. With this background, we embarked on an in-depth-analysis of the admission and final diagnoses of stroke code patients, as well as misdiagnoses, immediate treatment decisions and their consequences. (more…)