Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, telestroke services are helping increase better patient outcomes, according to a study published in JAMA Neurology. Investigators compared outcomes and 30-day survival among 150,000 stroke patients treated at more than 1,200 US hospitals. One-half of the centers offered telestroke services. Patients at hospitals with telestroke received better care and had a 4% higher 30-day survival rate than those at hospitals without telestroke, the study found. The largest benefits of stroke telecare were evident at hospitals with the lowest patient volumes and those in rural areas. Reperfusion rates were 13% higher among patients at hospitals with stroke telecare than among those at hospitals without telestroke services. “The results confirm what several smaller studies have shown: that delivering expert stroke neurological care via remote video technology can increase the number of patients getting the brain-saving clotbusting treatments,” said Dr. Salman Azhar, who directs stroke care at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “My sense is that this finding can be extrapolated to underserved hospitals in general where there is a paucity of stroke specialists.”
