Visualizing Acute Stroke Data to Improve Clinical Outcomes

Acute stroke care has highly time-dependent treatments that require teams of personnel to achieve good outcomes. It is estimated that for every minute the middle cerebral artery remains blocked in an ischemic stroke, 1.9 million neurons are lost.1 Reducing the variance and improving door-to-needle (DTN) time for thrombolysis and time from computed tomography (CT)-to-groin puncture for endovascular therapy will improve outcomes for patients with stroke.1–5 Therefore, reducing variance and improving treatment times are critical components for quality assurance efforts in stroke care. Feedback of DTN performance data has been used in quality improvement initiatives for acute stroke treatment.6,7 In a similar manner, we have observed that the first step of simply providing healthcare personnel with their measured metrics is an inducement to improve and work faster. However, the acute stroke performance data need to be presented in manner that is easy to understand, and it should be available through commonly used modalities to facilitate widespread use.