Abstract TP251: Onset-to-Door Times and Means of Transportation for Acute Ischemic Stroke Patients Attending a Public Hospital in Bogota DC, Colombia. Is an Ambulance the Fastest Way to Reach the Hospital?

Abstract

Introduction: A prospective stroke database was implemented as part of a still-growing comprehensive stroke centre (CSC). This CSC is located within a referral public hospital (Hospital Occidente de Kennedy) in Bogota DC, Colombia , that serves 2.3 million people of mainly low economic income. In this abstract, we present the data pertaining patients who were thrombolysed in our institution during the first year of data collection, and specify onset-to-door (OTD) times as they relate to the means of transportation used. Hypothesis: Acute stroke patients who arrive in ambulance have the shortest onset-to-door times. Methods: Printed forms were filled for every patient who arrived with diagnosis of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) or transient ischemic attack (TIA). Data was transcribed to an electronic database (Numbers, Apple Inc.) and analyzed with SPSS Statistics version 23 (IBM Corporation). A retrospective descriptive analysis was performed for central tendency and dispersion measures. Results: Since August 1st 2014 until July 31st 2015, 39 patients (17.7% of AIS patients) were thrombolysed. Mean onset-to-door times are shown in table 1. Prenotification was received for only 1 patient. All patients came from their homes. Conclusions: Almost half of our thrombolysed patients arrived in taxi to our institution. Taxi was the fastest means of transportation, ambulance was the slowest and private cars were in the middle of those. This confirmed our suspicion that the state-owned emergency medical services (SEMD) are suboptimal and that stroke patients prefer to use public transportation rather than SEMD. This should warn public health authorities on he urgent need to improve our SEMD. In the meantime, this finding prompts us to include taxi drivers in our periodic stroke campaigns.