Centralised Stroke Care Is Good For You
I had what some doctors have described as a serious stroke, although I think it might not have been that severe, although it did leave me with damaged eyesight.
I had the stroke in Hong Kong and within about an hour, I was in hospital receiving the special clot busting drug.
But if I’d had that stroke in London, I would have probably had that drug in the ambulance and I would have been in hospital within thirty minutes.
In common with Manchester, London has centralised stroke care in what are called hyperacute stroke units or HASUs. And according to research published in the BMJ, they work well and save lives and money for the NHS. Read all about the system in the Guardian. The article finishes like this.
So what’s stopping this system from being rolled out in other metropolitan areas? It’s a question that Morris’s collaborators are seeking to answer, by studying the potential barriers and facilitators of country-wide stroke unit reconfiguration. Morris himself wants to look at the cost-effectiveness of the exercise: does the improvement in care and reduction in hospital (and hospice) stays make the reconfiguration worthwhile?
There are a few hundred people alive today who would undoubtedly answer “yes”.
My life may not have been saved by a HASU, but I did have similar care.
Admittedly, not every hospital could have a HASU, but most metropolitan areas could and should.
If you take where I used to live near Cambridge, and you draw a thirty-minute ambulance ride area around Addenbrookes hospital, you would enclose about 300,000 people. So it is not just the large metropolitan areas that would benefit.
Everyone possible, should be within range of a HASU.
The Anonymous Widower 
I completely agree with you.
Comment by kidstrokemotion | August 8, 2014 |