You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
Ambulance documentation of stroke symptoms during the UK COVID-19 ‘Stay at Home’ message
  1. Graham McClelland1,
  2. Nina Wilson2,
  3. Lisa Shaw3,
  4. Michael Grayling2,
  5. Daniel Haworth1,
  6. Christopher I Price3
  1. 1 North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
  2. 2 Biostatistics Research Group, Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  3. 3 Stroke Research Group, Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Christopher I Price, Stroke Research Group, Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, UK; c.i.m.price{at}ncl.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2020-210319

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    On 23 March 2020 the UK government urged the public to ‘Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives’ in order to reduce consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic.1 Three large National Health Service (NHS) stroke units subsequently reported a 16% (95% CI 27.2 to 3.2) decrease in the weekly trend for stroke admissions during March–April compared with January–February 2020.2 Other countries have also reported unexpected reductions in admissions of up to 40% during similar lockdown campaigns.3 4 In contrast, one NHS ambulance service described no impact on suspected stroke callouts during the early lockdown interval between 23 March and 19 April 2020.5 However, this metric reflects caller information, which is known to be less reliable than on-scene clinician assessment. To explore an …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Caroline Leech

    • Twitter @mcclg

    • Contributors GM, LS, DH and CP conceived the work. GM and DH acquired the data. NW undertook data analysis. MG supported data analysis. GM and CP drafted the text. All authors provided interpretation and critical review of the final text.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests LS and CP receive non-financial support from Cerebrotech Medical Systems and grants from Innovate UK.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.