Quiz Ref ID Intravenous (IV) tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) is a treatment of proven benefit for select patients with acute ischemic stroke as long as 4.5 hours after onset.^1,2 Available evidence suggests a strong influence of time to therapy on the magnitude of treatment benefit. In stroke animal models, time to reperfusion is a dominant determinant of final infarct volume.³ In human patients, imaging studies show the volume of irreversibly injured tissue in acute cerebral ischemia expands rapidly over time, typically consuming 2 million additional neurons per minute until reperfusion is achieved.⁴ Pooled data from IV tPA clinical trials indicate that therapeutic benefit of tPA is greatest when given very early after ischemic stroke and declines throughout the first 4.5 hours after onset.^5,6

Background—: The benefits of intravenous tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) in acute ischemic stroke are time dependent, and guidelines recommend an arrival to treatment initiation (door-to-needle) time of ≤60 minutes. Methods and Results—: Data from acute ischemic stroke patients treated with tPA within 3 hours of symptom onset in 1082 hospitals participating in the Get With the Guidelines–Stroke Program from April 1, 2003, to September 30, 2009 were studied to determine frequency, patient and hospital characteristics, and temporal trends in patients treated with door-to-needle times ≤60 minutes. Among 25 504 ischemic stroke patients treated with tPA, door-to-needle time was ≤60 minutes in only 6790 (26.6%). Patient factors most strongly associated with door-to-needle time ≤60 minutes were younger age, male gender, white race, or no prior stroke. Hospital factors associated with ≤60 minute door-to-needle time included greater annual volumes of tPA-treated stroke patients. The proportion of patients with door-to-needle times ≤60 minutes varied widely by hospital (0% to 79.2%) and increased from 19.5% in 2003 to 29.1% in 2009 ( P <0.0001). Despite similar stroke severity, in-hospital mortality was lower (adjusted odds ratio, 0.78; 95% confidence interval, 0.69 to 0.90; P <0.0003) and symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage was less frequent (4.7% versus 5.6%; P 60 minutes. Conclusions—: Fewer than one-third of patients treated with intravenous tPA had door-to-needle times ≤60 minutes, with only modest improvement over the past 6.5 years. These findings support the need for a targeted initiative to improve the timeliness of reperfusion in acute ischemic stroke.

Background— Stroke results in substantial death and disability. To address this burden, Get With The Guideline (GWTG)-Stroke was developed to facilitate the measurement, tracking, and improvement in quality of care and outcomes for acute stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) patients in the United States. Methods and Results— We analyzed the characteristics, performance measures, and in-hospital outcomes in the first 1 000 000 acute ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and TIA admissions from 1392 hospitals that participated in the GWTG-Stroke Program 2003 to 2009. Patients were 53.5% women, 73.3% white, and with mean age of 70.1±14.9 years. There were 601 599 (60.2%) ischemic strokes, 108 671 (10.9%) intracerebral hemorrhages, 34 945 (3.5%) subarachnoid hemorrhages, 26 977 (2.7%) strokes not classified, and 227 788 (22.8%) TIAs. Performance measures showed small to moderate differences by cerebrovascular event type. In-hospital mortality rate was highest among intracerebral hemorrhage (25.0%) and subarachnoid hemorrhage (20.4%), and intermediate in ischemic stroke (5.5%) patients and lowest among TIA patients (0.3%). Significant improvements over time from 2003 to 2009 in quality of care were observed: all-or-none measure, 44.0% versus 84.3% (+40.3%, P <0.0001). After adjustment for patient and hospital variables, the cumulative adjusted odds ratio for the all-or-none measure over the 6 years was 9.4 (95% confidence interval, 8.3 to 10.6, P <0.0001). Temporal improvements in length of stay and risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality rate (for ischemic stroke and TIA) were also observed. Conclusions— With more than 1 million patients enrolled, GWTG-Stroke represents an integrated stroke and TIA registry that supports national surveillance, innovative research, and sustained quality improvement efforts facilitating evidence-based stroke/TIA care.

Neurocritical care depends, in part, on careful patient monitoring but as yet there are little data on what processes are the most important to monitor, how these should be monitored, and whether monitoring these processes is cost-effective and impacts outcome. At the same time, bioinformatics is a rapidly emerging field in critical care but as yet there is little agreement or standardization on what information is important and how it should be displayed and analyzed. The Neurocritical Care Society in collaboration with the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Society for Critical Care Medicine, and the Latin America Brain Injury Consortium organized an international, multidisciplinary consensus conference to begin to address these needs. International experts from neurosurgery, neurocritical care, neurology, critical care, neuroanesthesiology, nursing, pharmacy, and informatics were recruited on the basis of their research, publication record, and expertise. They undertook a systematic literature review to develop recommendations about specific topics on physiologic processes important to the care of patients with disorders that require neurocritical care. This review does not make recommendations about treatment, imaging, and intraoperative monitoring. A multidisciplinary jury, selected for their expertise in clinical investigation and development of practice guidelines, guided this process. The GRADE system was used to develop recommendations based on literature review, discussion, integrating the literature with the participants’ collective experience, and critical review by an impartial jury. Emphasis was placed on the principle that recommendations should be based on both data quality and on trade-offs and translation into clinical practice. Strong consideration was given to providing pragmatic guidance and recommendations for bedside neuromonitoring, even in the absence of high quality data.

Background— Prior studies suggest differences in stroke care associated with race/ethnicity. We sought to determine whether such differences existed in a population of black, Hispanic, and white patients hospitalized with stroke among hospitals participating in a quality-improvement program. Methods and Results— We analyzed in-hospital mortality and 7 stroke performance measures among 397 257 patients admitted with ischemic stroke to 1181 hospitals participating in the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke program 2003 through 2008. Relative to white patients, black and Hispanic patients were younger and more often had diabetes mellitus and hypertension. After adjustment for both patient- and hospital-level variables, black patients had lower odds relative to white patients of receiving intravenous thrombolysis (odds ratio [OR], 0.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.77 to 0.91), deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis (OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.83 to 0.92), smoking cessation (OR, 0.85; 95% CI, 0.79 to 0.91), discharge antithrombotics (OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.84 to 0.92), anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation (OR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.75 to 0.94), and lipid therapy (OR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.88 to 0.96), and of dying in-hospital (OR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.85 to 0.95). Hispanic patients received similar care as their white counterparts on all 7 measures and had similar in-hospital mortality. Black (OR, 1.31; 95% CI, 1.28 to 1.35) and Hispanic (OR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.20) patients had higher odds of exceeding the median length of hospital stay relative to whites. During the study, quality of care improved in all 3 race/ethnicity groups. Conclusions— Black patients with stroke received fewer evidence-based care processes than Hispanic or white patients. These differences could lead to increased risk of recurrent stroke. Quality of care improved substantially in the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Program over time for all 3 racial/ethnic groups.

Background—: There are few validated models for prediction of in-hospital mortality after ischemic stroke. We used Get With the Guidelines–Stroke Program data to derive and validate prediction models for a patient's risk of in-hospital ischemic stroke mortality. Methods and Results—: Between October 2001 and December 2007, there were 1036 hospitals that contributed 274 988 ischemic stroke patients to this study. The sample was randomly divided into a derivation (60%) and validation (40%) sample. Logistic regression was used to determine the independent predictors of mortality and to assign point scores for a prediction model. We also separately derived and validated a model in the 109 187 patients (39.7%) with a National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score recorded. Model discrimination was quantified by calculating the C statistic from the validation sample. In-hospital mortality was 5.5% overall and 5.2% in the subset in which NIHSS score was recorded. Characteristics associated with in-hospital mortality were age, arrival mode (eg, via ambulance versus other mode), history of atrial fibrillation, previous stroke, previous myocardial infarction, carotid stenosis, diabetes mellitus, peripheral vascular disease, hypertension, history of dyslipidemia, current smoking, and weekend or night admission. The C statistic was 0.72 in the overall validation sample and 0.85 in the model that included NIHSS score. A model with NIHSS score alone provided nearly as good discrimination (C statistic 0.83). Plots of observed versus predicted mortality showed excellent model calibration in the validation sample. Conclusions—: The Get With the Guidelines–Stroke risk model provides clinicians with a well-validated, practical bedside tool for mortality risk stratification. The NIHSS score provides substantial incremental information on a patient's short-term mortality risk and is the strongest predictor of mortality.