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STROKES: VICTIMS WILL GET BRAIN SCAN WITHIN 3 HOURS, SAY DOCTORS

PRIORITY: Now stroke victims will have faster access to treatment

Tuesday July 10,2007

By Victoria Fletcher, Health Editor

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TENS of thousands of stroke patients could have faster access to life-saving treatment after a radical shake-up of NHS care.

A stroke will be treated as an emergency equal to a heart attack after the condition was made a Category A priority.

This means ambulance crews must try to get patients to hospital within eight minutes, using their sirens and lights.

It would give patients a better chance of receiving blood-clotting drugs in time to stop major damage to the brain.

The guidelines, in the National Stroke Strategy published yesterday by the Department of Health, call for patients who have suffered a major stroke to be given a brain scan within three hours, and within a limit of one hour of arriving at A&E.

Those who have suffered a mini-stroke are to be given a brain scan within 24 hours – until now it has been a week.

But critics said last night that the 130,000 people who suffer a stroke every year in Britain had been neglected for far too long.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “I am alarmed that the Government has failed to give stroke the priority it deserves and I am concerned at the disparity of treatment available for stroke patients in A&E departments across the country, including access for every stroke patient to a CT scan within 24 hours.”

Joe Korner of the Stroke Association welcomed the recommendations but said there was no clear guidance on how local NHS trusts would implement the advice.

“Although stroke was already considered an emergency before, this will raise its profile with all hospital staff and is extremely symbolic,” he said. “But we are worried that some details are still a bit vague.

“The proof of the pudding will be whether ministers can now draw up a blueprint of how hospitals are to introduce these measures.”

Stroke is the country’s third biggest killer and costs the economy £7billion a year. But until now, patients suffering a mini-stroke known as a trans-ischaemic attack (TIA) were often sent home by their GP.

Rather than being sent to local hospitals, patients who have suffered a major stroke will now be rushed to new specialist stroke units for 24-hour expert care.

Announcing the new recommendations yesterday, Health Secretary Alan Johnson said: “Now it’s time to make stroke an absolute priority.”

The draft proposals should be finalised later this year.

They also call for better after-care of stroke victims once they return home with a review of their care after six weeks and then six months of being discharged.