Training and Consistency in Stroke Assessments

See related article, pages 2507–2511 and 2557–2559. Stroke is a global disease. It needs global tools for description and outcome assessment, common definitions for risk factors, common definitions for complications such as symptomatic hemorrhage, and common investigation protocols.Research into treatments for stroke depends on enrollment of large numbers of patients, possible only through international cooperation. Wide variation in initial stroke severity requires us to describe the population that we enroll. The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale is now the most widely used scale for measuring stroke severity in clinical trials1 and lies second only to the modified Rankin Scale for choice as a primary end point.2 This trend to homogeneity is important; consistency in language is required within trials and to interpret their results. For example, use of common …