The study of Door-to-needle time for Acute ischemic stroke in the emergency department in shahid beheshti hospital of Qom

Stroke is the second leading cause of mortality and the main cause of long-term disabilities worldwide. Time is critical to the treatment of stroke. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the interval between the patient's arrival and the start of antithrombotic therapy (door-to-needle (DTN) compare it with the international standard DTN time in patients with acute stroke referring to Qom Shahid Beheshti Hospital in 2017-2018.

This retrospective cross-sectional study was performed on 136 patients based on the inclusion criterion of incidence of acute stroke. Data including demographic data, time of triage, time of being visited by an emergency medicine specialist, a neurologist, tests schedule, time of brain CT scan, the start time of the drug injection by referring to medical records of patients, using checklist, using convenience sampling method were collected and analyzed to reach the desirable sample size.

Of 136 patients studied, 72 (53%) were men and more patients (52%) were above 55 years of age. According to the findings, the time interval between the emergency room (ER) arrival and the injection of antithrombotic drugs was calculated as 104 minutes. There was no significant relationship between the average duration of the triage to the receipt of the special treatment, but a significant correlation was observed between the mean time of the first visit by the emergency medicine specialist, the average duration of the first visit by the neurologist, mean CT duration, mean duration of transfer to the stroke ward, and receipt of the special treatment.

The DTN duration of the present study was about 60 minutes longer than the optimal time. Therefore, an effective step can be taken in removing the problem by removing the contributing factors.