Effect of Emergency Green Channel Optimization on Ischemic Stroke Patients: Impact on Emergency Response Time, Effectiveness, Anxiety, and Acute Stress.

Abstract

The aim was to assess the effectiveness of an optimized emergency green channel in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients and its effect on emergency response time, effectiveness, anxiety, and acute stress. A retrospective analysis was conducted on 349 AIS patients treated with intravenous thrombolysis from January 2019 to May 2022. The patients were divided into those who received optimized emergency green channel treatment (155) and those who did not (194). Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to balance the admission pathways, living conditions, insurance methods, and residential locations of the 2 patient groups. The key metrics comprised the times from onset to admission, admission to computed tomography (CT), CT to thrombolysis, admission to thrombolysis (door-to-needle time (DNT)), National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores at various intervals post thrombolysis, heart rate, blood pressure, and scores in Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the Stanford Acute Stress Reaction Questionnaire (SASRQ). Post PSM, 118 patients were analyzed (54 control and 64 observation). The observation group showed significantly lower time results than the control group, which included the following: the time from onset to admission (t = 31.428, P < .001), door-to-imaging time (t = 27.317, P < .001), imaging-to-needle time (t = 20.951, P < .001, and DNT (t = 25.954, P < .001). Significant differences were observed in 24 hour-post thrombolysis NIHSS scores, heart rate, blood pressure, SAS, and SASRQ scores (P < .05) but not in NIHSS scores at 7 and 30 days. The optimized emergency green channel process effectively reduced the treatment time for ischemic stroke patients, improved rescue efficiency, and positively influenced the psychological stress levels of patients post treatment.