Mobile Stroke Unit for Pre-hospital Emergency Care

Daniel Phillips836 enrolled

Overview

Emergency department overcrowding is a major challenge in medicine, leading to a delay in diagnosis and treatment for the patient due to long waiting times. This is very relevant for diseases like acute stroke and other emergencies. The Advanced Mobile Stroke Unit is an ambulance equipped with additional devices to diagnose and treat patients at the emergency site. Patients with less severe conditions can be diagnosed and safely left at home. The objectives of this project are to investigate whether the Advanced Mobile Stroke Unit compared to a normal ambulance enables more accurate triage of patients (treatment at home vs hospital vs specialist vs A\&E). The Advanced Mobile Stroke Unit ambulance will be used in a random order of weeks and this will be compared to weeks with normal ambulances. The study will be carried out by the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust in collaboration with the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust in the East of England. The project is a collaboration with Saarland University, Germany,

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

836

Conditions

Stroke, Acute Emergencies

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * acute emergency patients 18 years or older, who are identified via the national emergency telephone number 999 or 111with suspected severe medical emergency condition, which is categorised as: breathing problem, seizure, falls with head trauma, headache, sick person with suspected infection, stroke, unconsciousness * calls Monday to Friday 9am to 5 pm * written informed consent Exclusion Criteria: * terminally ill patients * pregnant patients * patients in cardiac arrest * patients in custody of Her Majesty's prison service

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Number of patients requiring hospital attendance within 4h of acute emergency situation

Patient attendance at hospital related to the emergency call (within 4hours) will be assessed

Time frame: acute emergency situation (4 hours)

Secondary Outcomes

Emergency management metrics

Time metrics related to the emergency call treatment (within 4 hours after call)

Time frame: acute emergency situation (within 4 hours after call)

Clinical Outcome on day 90

modified Rankin for patients with brain disease

Time frame: 90 days

Clinical Outcome on day 90

EQ-5D5L