Self-driven Prehospital Triage Decisions for Suspected Stroke

Setting the course for prehospital triage of patients with suspected stroke is challenging. Few would disagree, and to be frank, this is rather old news. Yet the critical question remains unsolved: how do we optimally drive prehospital triage decisions for patients with suspected stroke? Central to this question is the challenge of identifying stroke specifically due to large vessel occlusion (LVO) in the prehospital setting. Furthermore, the “best choice” among the various prehospital LVO screening tools available has not been clear. Although several versions have been developed, many had not been validated in the prehospital setting to date, let alone externally validated with head-to-head, prospective comparisons. In this issue of JAMA Neurology, Nguyen and colleagues make a substantial contribution to our understanding of these scales and their relative strengths and feasibilities.

Source: JAMA Neurology - November 30, 2020 Category: Neurology Source Type: research