Chapter 23 - Emerging stroke systems of care in Germany

Abstract

In order to reduce intrahospital times for stroke patients, we have implemented various strategies throughout the last 4 years. Swift restoration of cerebral perfusion is essential for the outcomes of patients with acute ischemic stroke. Endovascular treatment (EVT) has become the standard of care to accomplish this in patients with acute stroke due to large vessel occlusion (LVO). To achieve reperfusion of ischemic brain regions as fast as possible, all in-hospital time delays have to be avoided. Therefore management of patients with acute ischemic stroke was optimized with an interdisciplinary standard operating procedure (SOP). Stroke neurologists, diagnostic as well as interventional neuroradiologists, and anesthesiologists streamlined all necessary processes from patient admission and diagnosis to EVT of eligible patients. In a second step we established a one-stop management of stroke patients, meaning that imaging was acquired with the same angiography suite use for treatment of patients with LVO. In the last section of this chapter we discuss the latest trials on stroke therapy and their implications for our current triage systems and imaging patterns.