Joint Annual Meeting October 2014, Interlaken, Switzerland: Acute Stroke Management: Models of Pre-hospital Organisation

We expect dispatchers to detect strokes using triage scales (Cincinnati Stroke Scale or similar). When suspected, depending on the local emergency medical system (EMS) or the geography, either an ambulance with or without an emergency physician or a helicopter will be dispatched to the site. Until now, studies conducted on medical dispatchers’ performance in the diagnosis of stroke were disappointing with, at best, a sensitivity of 60% and a positive predictive value of 50%.