Another ENLS topic: Ischemic Stroke. But not the entire subject, and not even whether we should give tPA to stroke patients. Why not the latter topic--because I am not smart enough to know the answer. For that listen to David and Ashley and make your own decision. What we will talk about today is reducing door to tPA time.

There was a recently published study that gave an excellent description of one center's interventions to get their door to tPA time down to a ridiculously low level.

(PMID 22622858)

Here are the interventions they used:

The American Heart/Stroke Associations also have some resources on reducing door to tPA time.

The EMCrit Checklist

Here is the checklist of my interventions to reduce door-to-tPA-time:

Click Image for PDF

EMCrit Art Contest

Click on over to see the finalists and vote

What do you think about consent for tPA or anything else we spoke about today--leave a comment. Now on to the podcast...