By Dr Ellis van Etten, Department of Neurology, Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands.
I visited the E-Poster gallery during the first day of the virtual ESOC 2021 and was impressed by the quality of the science presented here. Although there was no live chatting with the presenters, they still were able to clearly present the results of their hard work.
Many studies focused on pre-hospital stroke care. An interesting study that caught my eye was presented by Ramos Pachón et al. from Spain. MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS DURING TRANSFER IN DRIP-AND-SHIP VS MOTHER-SHIP CIRCUITS: SECONDARY ANALYSIS OF RACECAT TRIAL. These authors found that patients in the mothership protocol had an increased risk of transfer complications (e.g. vomiting, GCS declining, RACE score worsening) compared with the drip-and-ship protocol. Transfer complications resulted in a higher odds of mortality and a worse clinical outcome.
Earlier identification of large vessel occlusion (LVO) patients was addresses is several studies. TELESTROKE: REAL-TIME VIDEO ANALYSIS ALLOWS IDENTIFICATION OF LVO IN PATIENTS WITH SUSPECTED STROKE was presented by S. Thielmann from Switzerland. This feasibility study in 97 suspected stroke patients concluded that their telestroke concept is feasible and that early identification of LVO-patients could be possible. This could lead to reduced onset-to-treatment-time, preparing for endovascular treatment, and an improved clinical outcome. I am very excited to learn the results of the planned main study that will start in 2022.
Another study that focused on early detection of LVO patients was the study by van Meenen et al from the Netherlands, DETECTION OF LARGE VESSEL OCCLUSION STROKE WITH ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM: FIRST RESULTS OF THE ELECTRA-STROKE STUDY. The authors present the results of the first 100 patients who presented to the emergency department with suspected or confirmed stroke and underwent dry electrode EEG. Of the 65 patients with sufficient data quality to perform the analysis, 35 had acute ischemic stroke and 9 had LVO of the anterior circulation. The EEG feature with the highest diagnostic accuracy for LVO stroke was theta-alpha ratio. The authors concluded that dry electrode EEG seems a promising tool for detection of LVO, although the quality of the data needs to be further improved and evaluation in the prehospital setting is also needed.
Another interesting study that caught my attention was presented by Krebs et al from Austria. CT- VERSUS MRI-BASED IMAGING FOR INTRAVENOUS THROMBOLYSIS IN ISCHEMIC STROKE. This observational study focused on the choice of initial imaging modality. The authors found that this did not have an effect on safety nor functional outcome after stroke treatment, although the door to needle time was considerably longer in the MRI group.
I hope I have given you an impression of interesting posters we have this year. The E-poster gallery can still be visited, so please go ahead and take a look and enjoy the remaining talks of the ESOC 2021.
