Stroke patients 'dying from poor treatment'

[GaryC 7]

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor

Last Updated: 3:13am BST 24/08/2007

Stroke victims are "dying unnecessarily" because Britain provides some of the worst treatment in Europe.

Despite spending just as much if not more on stroke services, more patients die and suffer serious disability than elsewhere, warned a neuroscience expert.

Professor Hugh Markus, of the Centre for Clinical Neuroscience, St George's University of London, says stroke is treated as a "Cinderella" subject.

He writes in the British Medical Journal today that the UK spends the majority of its stroke money on nursing and rehabilitation.

But if more investment was directed at treating the stroke immediately, it could avoid many deaths and cases of severe disability and so reduce the cost of nursing care.

Stroke must be treated as an emergency because patients who have a brain scan and start treatment with clot-busting drugs within three hours have a better chance of surviving and making a fuller recovery. But many hospitals struggle to carry out a scan within 24 hours.

It was estimated that 550 lives could be saved each year and 1,700 patients spared disability if care was improved.

Just one in 100 stroke patients get thrombolytic treatment compared with up to 30 per cent in some European countries, America and Australia.

In 2005 the National Audit Office said that if care was better organised, 550 deaths could be avoided each year and 1,700 patients would recover fully who would not otherwise do so.

Joe Korner, of the Stroke Association, said: "It is vital that stroke gets the priority it needs. Without investment hundreds will die needlessly. Public awareness of stroke also needs to be increased so that people can recognise the warning signs and dial 999 immediately. It is unacceptable that the prospects for people in the UK who have a stroke are far bleaker than in other countries."

Dawn Primarolo, the health minister, said stroke care had improved rapidly in the last 10 years, with more patients being seen by specialists and deaths falling.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../nstroke124.xml

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Yep. They need to get on that.