5th ESO EAST Meeting at 5th ESOC 2019 in Milan, Italy
by Milan R Vosko, MD, PhD, FESO, for the ESO-EAST Steering Committee.
Stroke specialists and coordinators from 28 countries have met in the beautiful Italian city of Milan one day prior to ESOC 2019 to share the progress in quality of stroke management in their countries and to exchange the experiences.
Chairs of the workshop, Francesca Pezzella and Natan Bornstein welcomed all participants and invited Bart van der Worp, ESO President, to the stage. Van der Worp called on ESO EAST national delegates to drive research in the region via RES-Q publications and invited them to submit their work for the ESOC plenary session. Valeria Caso, ESO Past President, introduced the European Stroke Action Plan (ESAP) 2018-2030. Caso stressed the importance of exchange of experiences in improving stroke care and encouraged everyone to read the ESAP.
Veronika Svobodova summarized the significant achievements of the ESO EAST project to date, including methodology support, fundraising and simulation training. The detailed insights in the RES-Q platform, personal experiences and how continuing feedback improve the stroke quality, have been shared by Robert Mikulik, ESO EAST Chairperson. In the following discussion, Julia Vadziuk (Angels, UA), Zuzana Gdovinova (SVK) and Thomas Fischer (Angels, BI, Germany) stressed their experiences and importance of discussing the data, how this process of data validation improve the quality and stroke care indicators.
Andreea M. Grecu and Steven Simsic, RES-Q Managers & Platform Architects gave an update on an impressive data growth and new development.
Veronika Svobodova presented the hottest news – IRENE COST Action. This Grant of the European Community will offer funding opportunities, conference grants, scientific missions and training schools to increase the publishing activity from member countries. Dedicated ESO EAST strokologists have offered their full mentoring support from ESO EAST Steering committee members.
Invited guest speaker, Peter Kolominsky-Rabas, clinical neurologist and health economist from Germany demonstrated how evidence from registries can impact not only local methodology, but also serving arguments for public and politics. He articulated that stroke is a comparable cheap to treat when compared with other NCDs.
Congratulation to all motivated and dedicated neurologists who have established stroke network and collected stroke data using RES-Q. Here is the list of country reports: Armenia (Nina Yeghiazaryan), Azerbaijan (Rana Shiraliyeva) , Bulgaria (Silva Andonova), Croatia (Hrvoje Budincevic), Czech Republic (Robert Mikulik), Estonia (Janika Körv), Georgia (Alexander Tsiskaridze), Hungary (Daniel Bereczki), Kasachstan (Zauresch Akhmetzhanova), Kyrgyzstan (Inna Lutsenko), Lithuania (Alexandras Vilionskis), Poland (Michal Karlinski), Moldova (Stanislav Groppa), Macedonia (Anita Arsovska), Romania (Cristina Tiu), Russian Federation (Tatjana Kharitonova), Serbia (Milija Mijajlovic), Slovakia (Zuzana Gdovinova), Ukraine (Natalia Chemer).
Chairs of the poster session Francesca Pezzella and Milan Vosko guided all national reports and were delighted by the rising quality of stroke care, activity within the RES-Q Registry and motivation to cope with challenges.
In the afternoon, ESO EAST Advisor Bo Norrving reported about the long experience with the Swedish stroke registry and stressed the importance of follow up.
Thomas Fischer showed excellent results from the Angels project. The Angels project demonstrates, what it means to implement “better” and “more”. (2,700 registered Hospitals from 95 countries, 100,000 patients from 750 sites in Quality registries). Simulation training significantly helps to optimize processes in the acute stroke management.
In the last session, Robert Mikulik moderated a lively discussion from the audience sharing troubles and successes from various countries.
Reports from numerous countries show, that the process of stroke quality improvement is progressing in a “spreading depression” manner. Congratulations to all participants and their collaborators for their great performance. In many countries there is basic work to do, in some optimisation, but all follow the same goal – improving stroke care on the global level.
The RES-Q Registry (Registry of Stroke Care Quality) is open for all countries, which want to improve their stroke care. These are welcome to join the project on https://stroke.qualityregistry.org/ . More info also on https://eso-stroke.org/eso-east/
ESO EAST (European Stroke Organization Enhancing and Accelerating Stroke Treatment)
is the first comprehensive international program of improving stroke care in Europe by the European Stroke Organisation in 2015 initiated by Valeria Caso and Robert Mikulik. Luzia Balmer and Jennifer Thomsen are supporting this project administratively from the ESO Office.
More Information in IRENE COST Action: www.cost.eu/actions/CA18118/
ESO EAST is supported by independent and unrestricted educational grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, EVER Pharma and St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno, Czech Republic.
